Ceremony
by irithyll
Summary: "I always lose you." Chris manages to choke out, the weight in his chest so heavy that he's struggling to breathe. Jill only gives him a sad smile as she looks up at him with glassy eyes and whispers, "Maybe that's the way it's meant to be."
1. Chapter 1

**1**

* * *

"_Chris_."

The sound of her voice is so soft that Chris isn't sure he heard it. He hovered in the hazy limbo between wakefulness and sleep, feeling weightless as he remained shrouded in the thick blanket of fog that enveloped his mind. Somewhere, someone was calling his name, but he couldn't be certain as to who or where.

He remembers this-the heavy thrumming of rain against the window pane, a deafening crack of lightning in the distance, and the scent of burning wax and dust. Chris has survived this moment a thousand times, but has never once been granted the outcome he wished for most of all, an alternate ending in which he is the one to die.

It's strange, he thinks, to so desperately hope for death. Something about it seemed fundamentally wrong, the ultimate defiance against biology in spite of all of its attempts to program survival into his genes.

Chris doesn't give it any further thought; instead, he turns on his heel with a practiced precision to find pale blue eyes.

"_Jill_."

He breathes out her name and, if it sounds desperate, he doesn't really care. Chris knows how this story ends and he's going to savor every last line along the way. She isn't dressed the way he remembers. This time, she's wearing that damn wetsuit from the mission on the _Queen Zenobia_.

Not that he's complaining.

She looks different this time around and Chris thinks she might have been a mirror image of herself from their S.T.A.R.S. days were that fucking scar not peeking out from beneath her open zipper. He hates it, not because it ruins her skin, but because it reminds him of _this._ Chris is forced to remember his failure every time he sees it and part of him feels selfish for getting so bent out of shape over it because Jill probably hated it even more. He couldn't even begin to fathom the horrible things she had endured.

"We don't have to do this." He says offhandedly as he walks the perimeter of the dining room table.

A rumble of thunder murmurs from outside of the mansion and he isn't surprised by the sudden flash of blue light that envelops the room for a brief moment. Jill stares out the window with interest, taking in the storm as it angrily rages on.

"We can't just abandon the mission." She's always the voice of reason, even in his nightmares, and she follows up with, "What's gotten into you, Chris?"

Chris looks up at the chandelier above and counts the cobwebs in the dim flicker of candlelight. There's still seven of them, just as he had remembered, and he feels strangely accomplished for recalling the small detail.

"I just don't want to lose you again." He confesses with a sheepish smile on his face.

Jill takes a step toward him and he wonders if she might touch him. Her hand is suspended in the air, fingers curled forward as though she plans to take hold of something. She hesitates for a moment and he closes his eyes to focus on the increasing heat of her body as she draws closer.

He feels her hand against his chest. Her touch is light and he thinks about grabbing her by the wrist to tug her into his embrace.

"But you'll find me." She whispers hoarsely and Chris feels something tighten in his chest.

"Not really." He keeps his eyes closed as he shakes his head. "Not all of you. There's a part of you that's missing."

When he opens his eyes, she's looking up at him with those boundless blue eyes that make him want to burn down the fucking mansion and break the kneecaps of every last fucker in Umbrella or Tricell or whatever the fuck they want to call themselves nowadays. Something sad flickers across her face and she gives him the most miserable attempt at a smile he's ever seen.

"I'm sorry."

Her words somehow piss him off more. She shouldn't be apologizing for what that fucker did to her. It wasn't her fucking fault. If he hadn't have been so sloppy, she never would have thrown herself out the window in the first place.

In a way, Chris guessed he was inadvertently responsible for it all too.

"Don't be." He manages to choke out. "Let's just go."

Jill isn't so austere this time. She relents without fuss and, to his surprise, she slips her hand into his. He is taken off guard by the warmth of her skin, but it doesn't deter him in any way. Chris had forgotten how she used to feel before.

When they step through the doorway that once led to the lobby, they find themselves in the RPD locker room.

"This doesn't seem right." Jill muses aloud and Chris doesn't bother to question it because dreams are weird in that way, aren't they?

"Seems right to me." He says. "This is where I first realized that I was madly in love with you."

Jill lightly smacks him on the shoulder in a playful gesture and he shrugs.

"I mean it." He tells her. "After we got back from Arklay, it all just...dawned on me."

He watches her move with catlike grace to her locker and doesn't hide just how much he appreciates the way that wetsuit clings to her skin. Both age and P30 had changed her body and, though he still very much appreciated the lean muscle she now boasted, part of him missed the soft curves she once sported.

"You know, I thought about quitting all of this shit so many times." He's never told her this before, not even in his dream, and he somehow feels a little nervous about it.

"I thought about a lot of things." Chris says as he scratches the back of his neck, a physical representation of his shame for what comes out of his mouth next, "Cheesy things. White picket fences, a dog that never listens, Christmas morning creaks...you know?"

He clears his throat as Jill looks back at him over her shoulder.

"Really?" She asks, "You thought about those things?"

Chris laughs to suppress the choking sensation in his throat.

"I...was going to ask you to marry me after this."

He regrets the confession the very moment it leaves his mouth, but there's nothing to be done about it. Jill pauses while in the midst of picking a lock and looks back at him over her shoulder with a coy smile.

"What's stopping you now?"

It was a valid question that Chris fails to summon an answer to. He watches her make quick work of the padlock and it clatters to the floor noisily as she pulls open the door to the locker.

"Well…" He smirks even though her back is once again turned towards him, "Will you?"

Jill steps into the locker and Chris ducks in after her only to subsequently stumble out into her Raccoon City apartment. The image is nearly identical to his memory of it save for the woman reclined back on the bed. Amidst the hues of blue, grey, and white, a blonde Jill looks up at him.

"Are you sure you want to ask me that?" She lets out a sigh as she pulls down the neckline of her t-shirt, exposing the destroyed skin that had once been claimed by the P30 device.

It almost annoys him that she is willing to entertain the idea that he _wouldn't_ over something so stupid. Although he grimaces internally each time he sees it, Chris has never spoken a negative word about the extensive scars on her chest. He loves her so fucking _much_ and it's almost insulting to know that she thinks anything could ever change his mind about that.

He moves to the foot of the bed and places a hand on the bare skin of her ankle. She's built in such a willowy way that he's able to envelop the entire circumference of it with his fingers and it makes him feel a certain way that he can't describe.

"More sure than death and taxes." He comments lamely and Jill smiles even as she traces her fingertips along the raised flesh.

"I've always secretly wanted that too." She tells him, voice quiet and wet with tears that threaten to fall, "I hate that things have changed."

Chris opens his mouth to speak, but he fails to come up with a competent retort because really, she's not wrong. Of course Kijuju had changed the both of them, but, in most ways, she was still Jill Valentine.

_His_ Jill Valentine.

"I still want it." He says softly, leaning in close to cup her cheek in his palm. His callused skin is rough against her soft flesh and he trails the pad of his thumb along her cheek to brush away and errant tear. "The stupid picket fence, the dog, obnoxious kids...all of it."

A smile tugs at the corner of her lips, but it soon begins to fade. Chris can no longer make out the features of her face and he feels his heart skip a beat as Jill becomes a blur of color. His hands move to her shoulders and he grips them tightly while he shifts his attention from her to the surroundings of her apartment in rapid succession. He can see the stitching in the quilt on the bed, so why can't he see _her_?

"Jill?" He asks, voice lifted in panic.

He feels her move beneath his hold and his fingers curl more tightly into her. Jill's slipping away and he watches her fade into a blur of color, like watercolors being rinsed clean in the sink. He shifts so his arm encircles her back and he pulls her close to him in the best semblance of an embrace that he can manage as she fades.

"I always lose you." He chokes out around something thick that's lodged in his throat.

"Maybe this is how it's meant to be." She whispers as the ghost of her hand travels the length of his spine.

Chris feels something catch in his chest. His eyes are burning and his lungs feel stiff as he struggles to take in a breath.

"I'm not ready." He whispers, but before he can hear her response, she's gone-faded into an empty space that feels more like a sinister presence than an absence.

Chris doesn't startle awake with a dramatic gasp and heaving breaths. Instead, he opens his eyes to find the darkness of their bedroom and he cringes at the feel of the slick layer of sweat that's formed along his body and plasters the dampened sheets flush to his skin. He runs a hand over his face and massages his temples with his thumb and index finger before turning his head to the side in search of Jill.

He knows it's real this time because she's still laying beside him, still looks the same as he remembers. Soft moonlight and the glow of the lamppost nearby filter in through the thin curtains of their bedroom and provide just enough light for him to make out the details that had gone missing in his nightmare.

Her lips are parted slightly as she sleeps, her chest rising and falling shallowly with eased breaths. Part of him wishes she could find the same relief in wakefulness as she does in sleep. It seems that Jill can only truly find rest during the moments in which her mind is idle, but he can never muster the courage to question what it is that lingers in her mind and keeps her on edge and it's not necessarily because he doesn't _want_ to know.

No, Chris doesn't ask what ghosts haunt Jill's mind because he's afraid to get to know them. He cannot begin to fathom the horrors she had been subjected to while trapped in captivity under Wesker and the guilt that weighs down her shoulders might be too hefty for him to lift.

Rebecca once told him that pressuring her to tell him wouldn't be conducive to healing and he initially held onto that advice.

_"You can't make her tell you, Chris."_

_"She will tell you when she's ready."_

_"Forcing her out of her comfort zone will only cause more trauma."_

Now, he almost laughs at the memory because he wonders if Jill even has a comfort zone. She's only truly at peace while she's unconscious, but they don't know that about her. Everyone is too busy keeping her at arm's length and handling her with kid gloves as though she were made of poorly tempered glass to really get to know her.

They were afraid of her and even Jill knew it.

_"I'm still dead, aren't I?"_

_Her voice reminded him of the ocean, turbulent and wet, and he wasn't sure that he had the strength to keep afloat. Hearing her sound so broken nearly shattered him, but he put on the best facade he could manage if only to save face. Jill had begged him not to force her to attend the BSAA's Christmas party, but Claire's insistence that it would help her had convinced him otherwise._

_He was definitely regretting it then._

_"What do you mean?" He asked, feigning ignorance._

_Jill didn't look at him, but instead kept her eyes fixed on the crowd of people in the room. _

_"It's like I'm an imposter to them." She whispered. "I'm just a monster who crawled into Jill Valentine's skin. A wolf in sheep's clothing."_

_Chris watched a woman across the room whisper into the ear of one of her colleagues, compelling her to shift her attention from her glass of wine to Jill. They both watched her with the same interest one would regard a caged animal-curiously entertained, but still wary of it coming too close-and it served as a spark to ignite the flames of rage within him._

_"Fuck them, Jill. They're just a bunch of pencil pushers who don't know shit about what really goes on in the world."_

_If it was meant to comfort her, it didn't. Jill only gave him an unconvincing smile in return as she slipped her hand into his and gave it a weak squeeze._

_"Yeah," She breathed, voice unsure as she tried to convince herself, "Fuck them."_

Chris decides he's awfully tired of letting everyone else try to dictate how he cares for Jill when they themselves are too terrified to step into the cage. It's a trait of humanity that's rattled him for a while, a pet peeve that earned him a label of being _problematic _amongst authority at a young age.

He almost rolls his eyes as he reaches out to Jill's sleeping form. Though she wasn't keen on the changes her body had undergone, he still thinks she's the most stunning thing he's ever seen. She's Jill, _his_ Jill, despite the pale hair, battle scars, and whatever else she wrinkles her nose at.

Chris trails his fingers along the sharp edge of her collarbone to the curve of her shoulder. Her skin is so smooth beneath his touch that it almost pains him in a way because he doesn't know how something so perfect can be so damaged. It's a concept that he can't wrap his head around, a conundrum that keeps him awake at night like clockwork.

Jill stirs beneath his hand and he inwardly curses himself for disturbing her on account of his own selfish indulgence. He remains as still as he can manage, barely even breathing as he waits for her to drift back into her deep state of sleep.

She doesn't.

Her pale lashes part and she regards him with lazy, half-lidded eyes. She blinks the sleep away and makes a quiet sound in her throat as she shifts her hips and repositions herself more fully onto her side as she concerningly asks, "Chris?"

A smile threatens to break out on his face and he shakes his head as he tucks an errant lock of light hair behind her ear.

"I didn't mean to wake you." He says sheepishly, voice tender as he follows up the apology with a suggestion. "You should go back to sleep."

In response, she only moves closer to him. Jill tucks her arms in close and makes herself as small as she can manage against him. She buries her face in the heated flesh of his bare chest and lets out a contented sigh when he wraps his arms around her to pull her just a _little_ closer.

"I used to try to imagine this to help me sleep at night." She confesses and then, as an afterthought, she adds, "Before."

He knows what she means_-before_ she succumbed to P30. Before she lost herself. Before Wesker made her into a weapon.

Chris can't fucking stand it. He's been told a thousand and ten times that he's not supposed to feel guilty by a handful of people who hadn't had the loves of their lives sacrifice themselves and be made into weapons of mass destruction because of it.

But he still does.

_"You can't hold yourself accountable for this, Chris!" _

_The fury in Claire's voice was sharp and she brandished it like a blade. Each word that she spoke was like a stab to the chest, but, in some way, he appreciated the ache. The burn deep in his chest reminded him that he was still capable of feeling something, that the numbness that enveloped him wasn't permanent._

_"You weren't there, Claire."_

_He spat the words like venom, eyes narrowed into slits as he scrutinized her with a judgmental glare._

_"I know you're good at what you do, Chris, and I know you like to beat yourself up when you don't deserve it."_

_Claire's words enraged him. She had a penchant for throwing her unsolicited two cents into the pot all the damn time when it came to her brother and, this time, he truly didn't fucking want it._

_"I was sloppy, Claire!" He shouted, teeth gritting together as he hesitated between exclamations. "If I hadn't been so hot-headed, Jill would still be alive!"_

_Claire fell into a silence, rendered speechless by her brother's sudden outburst. Furrowing her brows together, she slung her purse over her shoulder and hesitated at the door in order to get the last word._

_"Jill's dead, Chris." She said, voice shaking. "Nothing can change that, but I know she didn't die just for you to hide in your apartment and drink yourself to death. Don't let her sacrifice be in vain."_

_The slam of the door rattled him down to his bones, but he wasn't sure if it was from the force of the action itself or the enmity of the woman who had done it._

Chris just smiles as he languidly trails his fingertips along the curve of her back.

"You haunted me." He laughs a little as he says it because it sounds so fucking cliche, but it's the truth.

He can feel Jill's hot, moist breath against his chest as she breathes shallowly.

"I still feel like a ghost."

Sometimes, he wonders if she is.

* * *

Jill doesn't know what she's looking at.

No matter how many directions she turns it, she can't figure out what the subject of the drawing is. She sees the squiggly lines and the messes of color scribbled across the page, but it doesn't look like much of anything even when she squints her eyes and tilts her head to the side. If it's meant to be an abstract piece, it doesn't surprise her. She never was one to understand art anyway.

"It's really nice, Liv." She lies as she hands the paper back to the girl.

Olivia's beautiful, a spitting image of her mother despite the waves of pale hair that tumble past her shoulders. She's everything a little girl should be-messy hair, infectious laughter, and happy-go-lucky pastel crayon scribbles across whatever errant sheet of paper she can find. Being around Claire's daughter lifts her spirits, but Jill can't help but wonder about what could have been when she's around her. Maybe, in another timeline, she could have had a daughter too, one with pale blue eyes and her father's sideways smile.

"I'm gonna draw one for Uncle Chris, too!" She proudly exclaims, bursting into a series of giggles the moment it comes from her mouth.

Jill doesn't know what Olivia's chortling at, but she finds that she's laughing, too. She can hardly keep up with the girl as she bursts into a sprint, a blur of blonde and blue from the nautical striped dress she's wearing. Jill chases her to the kitchen and effortlessly lifts her into one of the chairs.

"What are you going to draw?" She asks as she drops into the seat beside the girl, chin resting on her hand in a curious pose.

"I'm going to draw Uncle Chris's favorite thing in the entire world." She says cheekily, her grin so wide that her dimples are on full display.

Jill raises an eyebrow in question and Olivia giggles again.

"I'm gonna draw you!" She blurts out before adding a spunky, "_Duh!_"

Her breath catches in her throat and, for a fleeting second, she feels dizzy.

"_Not a day went by that he didn't talk about you."_

_Jill nearly choked on her wine, the sudden declaration coming mid-sip as she tilted her glass. She closed her eyes tightly as she forced herself to swallow the mouthful, buying herself time to process Claire's words. It was a topic she had hoped to avoid that night._

"_I…" She fingered the base of her glass idly as she searched for the right response. Not surprisingly, her mind remained infuriatingly silent, all white noise as she choked out, "I'm so sorry, Claire."_

_If Claire hated her, Jill wouldn't have blamed her. Claire was the one who was forced to endure the torment she had caused her brother. It would only be natural for her to feel some sense of animosity for her over it._

_Claire was stunning as always, even with her hair pulled back into a messy bun and an alcoholic flush across her cheeks. She closed her eyes and smiled while she shook her head._

"_Don't be sorry, Jill. You saved my brother's life." She leaned against Jill, resting her head on her shoulder with a contented sigh._

"_I love you more than words can express for it." Claire gushed, taking Jill's hand in her own and entwining their fingers together. "Promise you'll take care of him for me, okay?"_

Jill coughs to force down the sob that forms in her throat.

"Make me skinny and pretty, please." She teases, ruffling Olivia's hair as she stands.

Chris and Claire had been called to an emergency joint meeting between the B.S.A.A. and TerraSave, leaving her behind to watch over Olivia until Leon's shift ended. It was a task she had been entrusted with often these days, but she was grateful for the opportunity to get out of Chris's house.

Though, really, the old Jill Valentine was rolling in her grave. How had she been demoted from special ops to being an on-call babysitter?

With a sigh, she turns on the television, but she feels her stomach sink at the sight of the news ticker running across the screen.

_Bioterrorist outbreak in Fukoka - B.S.A.A. reports death toll is "uncountable"_

There's a loud, ringing sound in her ears that drowns out the words of the reporter on the screen. Jill winces and presses her palm against the side of her head, willing the sudden, piercing pain that shoots through her temple to lessen. She catches herself thinking that she shouldn't watch this, not with Olivia around, but then the images come.

A grainy video taken with shaky hands shows a B.O.W. snarling as it stumbles down the street, flesh half-melted from muscle and bone as a fire rages in the background. It's almost as if its tissue had been liquefied as it openly gushed down the length of its arm, splattering onto the pavement with each jerking movement that it made.

The image shifts to a still of a man screaming, face twisted into one of pain. Jill can only assume the source of his discomfort is the series of sharp, bony prominences that jut from his body in various directions like spines. It's terrible, she thinks, just in time for the visual to change.

This time, it's a young girl who stares at the camera with black, sullen eyes. Her entire body appears to be engulfed by leech-like creatures that swarm over her, leaving only her neck and face exposed. Jill's eyes are locked with hers, even as the leeches continue to swarm over her and inevitably envelop her whole.

She feels a sharp, seizing pain in her chest and she takes in a staggered breath. Jill's vision is fading from the outside in, a fog of grey forming in her periphery and rapidly moving towards the center of her line of sight. She feels something wet drip down her face and chin and she thinks it's a nosebleed, but she can't be too sure. Her lungs are burning and she begins to cough. Jill clamps one hand over her mouth as her other fumbles for leverage in her blinded state.

Jill thinks she's on the floor now, given the throbbing pain in her shoulder and the burn of the rug against her skin as she writhes. She's not aware of her body. Maybe she's moving, maybe she's not. She's not sure.

She's coughing, coughing so hard that her throat is raw and she thinks this is it-this is how it ends.

Her fingers curl into a fist and she clutches at her shirt, turning onto her side. She scrapes her nails against the wooden flooring and tries to call out, but she can't even hear herself over the low-pitched whine that echoes in her ears.

She feels something, a presence. In the absence of sight, she somehow sees a figure in the distance amidst the darkness.

Jill reaches out and it turns.

The final sight she recognizes is the glint of light against those impossibly dark shades before she succumbs to the state of unconsciousness that her warring body so desperately seeks.

"_Giving up so soon, Jill?"_

* * *

Have y'all ever made yourself cry while writing because lord knows I did about ten times while writing this. I promise it'll be short-about 4 more chapters-because my fragile heart can't take much more of this abuse.


	2. Chapter 2

Jill can make out the slow, rhythmic beeping of a machine in the otherwise still darkness. It's a sound she's heard before, one that fills her with a state of dread because she realizes that the calculated, quiet chime comes in tune with each beat of her heart, evidence that she is very much _alive _when she isn't sure that she wants to be.

"Albert," an annoyed voice drolls from nearby, "Your pet is awake."

She knows that voice, that _name. _The beeping hastens as she feels her heartbeat begin to accelerate and her breathing becomes a shallow, rapid staccato of panic. How did they find her? Why is she here again?

"Oh? I was beginning to think it would be a failure."

When she opens her eyes, blinding fluorescent light causes her to close them once more. The only sight she had managed to take in was the bright blur of white that was unsettlingly clinical in nature. Suddenly, she can smell the antiseptic and feel the wires that drape over her body like tethers and she wonders if, perhaps, she is dead after all because there is no fire or brimstone in Jill's version of hell, only sterile fields and the cool rush of intravenous infusions.

"Open your eyes, Jill."

It's a terse command that she so desperately wants to disobey, but her body acts in defiance. When she opens her eyes, she finds that he's looming over her, studying her as though she were a sculpture on display.

"Wesker."

Jill's voice is perhaps colder than the room she is trapped in and it causes his lips to curl into the faintest hint of a smirk. He pushes his dark shades up the narrow bridge of his nose and turns away, nonchalantly strutting towards the x-rays plastered on the wall.

"Why did you bring me back here?" She hates how hoarse her voice is, how small she seems.

He laughs - a lifeless, robotic sound that chills her to her core.

"You think _I_ brought you back here?" He lowers his shades just far enough to grant her a glimpse of his reddened irises as he looks back at her over his shoulder for a brief moment. "Oh, quite the contrary, Jill. You brought _yourself_ here."

She rolls her eyes, but the bleating of the monitor rats her out, tattles on her heart that's racing out of fear.

"I'm dead, right?" Jill asks, turning her head to the side. She can feel the frigid metal of the gurney against her cheek and she watches Excella with a careful eye, searching for any semblance of a hint at the truth. The woman had always worn her heart on her sleeve, her emotions evident in all that she did.

Curiously, Excella doesn't react. She simply sits on the opposite side of the room, her long legs crossed as she studies the edges of her perfectly manicured nails.

"No," she languidly speaks, "But you'll soon wish you were."

She rises from her seat with an infuriating elegance and Jill winces with each loud click of her heels against the tile. Excella rounds her like a shark would its prey, nose wrinkled and glossy lips pulled back into a snarl.

"It will be quite a treat to watch the mighty Jill Valentine fall."

Jill can feel her nails digging into the tender flesh of her palm. She doesn't realize her fingers are curled into a fist until she feels the burn of sensitive skin breaking down and she doesn't notice she's swinging until her knuckles are throbbing. Excella's dress is ruined by the trickle of blood that drips from her now crooked nose and Jill isn't sure if the blood smeared across her knuckles is the battered woman's or her own.

It doesn't matter. The sight of it awakens something from deep within her, something that's been hiding in the depths for far too long. Jill leaps to standing, wires stretched and straining as she grabs hold of Excella's hair and yanks her down against gurney. She doesn't hesitate, only tightens her grip on her fistful of hair as she slams her skull against the hard surface, once, twice, a third time as the woman shrieks and gurgles while blood fills her airway.

"Do you _really_ think this will make it all better, Jill?" Wesker asks, amused by the display of power and rage and unperturbed by Excella's misery.

Jill realizes what she's done, sobered by his words, but she doesn't feel regret. There's only a sense of relief for having finally accomplished a long-awaited task. She thinks she deserves it.

"Yes."

She doesn't feel the need to lie. Jill has hated Excella and her snarky attitude since the first time she laid eyes on her. Wesker smirks, a subtle twinge at the corner of his mouth as it threatens to turn upwards.

"Good." He says, reaching out to take her chin into his hand appreciatively. "This was how it was always meant to be."

It makes her feel sick to know he's proud of her, that she has somehow fulfilled one of his twisted desires. Ever since the beginning, she had been defiant and fought him tooth and nail, even after P30 had almost entirely taken control of her. To know that she has somehow fulfilled any of his fucked up fantasies infuriates her.

She feels bile burn the lining of her throat. It makes her eyes water and she stumbles towards the counter to support herself against as she begins to vomit. Her body trembles with the force of each heave, vision blurred on account of how watery her eyes are. She can hear the contents of her stomach splashing loudly against the tile and once the retching comes to a much celebrated end, she wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand.

When she opens her eyes, she's surprised by the smear of coppery red that stains the pale flesh of her hand. Red is splattered against the stark white canvas of her room, radiating out from the area surrounding her feet, and she realizes that it's blood.

_Her_ blood.

Jill looks up at Wesker with wide eyes and he only laughs.

"Did you truly think you deserve to live while I fester in Hell?" He asks, stepping forward slowly.

With each step he takes, Wesker begins to wither. She watches his cheeks grow hollow, skin growing so thin that it begins to tear away. The dark dress shirt he wears hangs loose on his skeletal frame and she can see hints of yellowed bone peeking out from beneath the cracks in his skin. When he comes close, he tears away his shades and she watches the liquified remains of his eyeballs dribble from the empty sockets in his skull.

"_Mors vincit omnia_, Miss Valentine." He hisses and she begins to fall.

The room fades into nothingness and, in a way, she's grateful for the freefall that follows. Jill is falling through space so swiftly that the wind whips at her skin hard enough to sting, but she finds that she appreciates it in some strange way because pain means there's still some humanity left in her, doesn't it?

After all, she hadn't felt much of anything when P30 was in control, not until…

"_Jill Valentine!"_

_It felt like breaking the surface of water. She had been oblivious to the world around her, submerged so deeply in the realm of unconsciousness that she had been both blinded and deafened. The sudden sound of a voice startled her, jarred her to her very core. It felt as though she was being ripped from the surf to keep from drowning, but the waves had felt so nice..._

_Someone else was down here with her? Someone she...knew? It must have been because that was her, wasn't it? She was Jill Valentine...wasn't she? _

_Suddenly, she was aware of it all-the dimly lit Monarch Room, the smell of smoke, the heat of the body pinned beneath her knee, the drone of Wesker's fucking voice. She saw him then, trapped beneath her, grunting in pain. At first, she wasn't sure, but he met her with those dark, sad eyes and she knew it was him. Chris._

_**Her**_ _Chris._

_She released his arm as though it had scalded her and let up on the pressure of her knee against his throat like she had been thrown back. Her gaze was fixated on her hands and she stared at them in horror, in disbelief that they had been capable of somehow harming him._

_Why? Why had she done that? How?_

_Her chest felt as though it had been torn in two. The mere act of breathing felt like fire licking at her lungs and she clutched at the front of her bodysuit, desperately attempting to take fistfuls of the fabric. Something was heavy against her skin, something was clenching the tender flesh, something was_ _**hurting**__. _

_As she stumbled back, she saw his face. Chris's face, twisted into a horrible image of fear and regret that made Jill remember just how it had felt to die._

Jill thinks she's losing her mind. She hears the beeping again, the beeping of that damn monitor that's recording the thrumming of her heart. It starts off steady and slow and begins to pick up speed, blipping so fast that it makes her mind whirl.

Before she opens her eyes, she curls her hand into a fist and prepares for a swing. She hears the scrape of a chair against the floor and waits until she feels a presence looming over her and she lurches forward to throw the fist with as much force as she can muster, but she's met with resistance.

Jill opens her eyes and finds her hand trapped in a warm, callused palm that couldn't ever belong to someone as frigid as Wesker.

"Oh god, _Leon_." She breathes, "I'm sorry, I thought…"

Leon gives her a sympathetic half-smile as he releases her hand with a shake of his head that causes his light hair to fall into his eyes.

"It's alright, Jill." He forces a wider smile as he steps back from her bedside to grant her space. "You don't have to explain."

Jill looks down at the crisp, white sheet that's pooled in her lap and studies the probe that's affixed to her finger to monitor her vital signs. She doesn't know how she ended up in a hospital room, but she suspects it had something to do with the man sitting beside her. The last thing she _thinks_ she recalls as truly having occurred was babysitting his daughter and seeing the news and…

"Oh god." Jill jerks her head in Leon's direction so quickly that it pulls something in her neck. "_Liv_. Is Liv okay?"

"She's fine." He assures her, waving his hand dismissively as if to dispel the thought from her mind, "Moira's with her."

Jill leans back against the pillows and lets out a long sigh of relief. If something had happened to Claire and Leon's daughter while under her care, she _absolutely_ wouldn't have been able to live with herself. Despite Leon's attempt at nonchalance, Jill suspects that she will no longer be entrusted to care for Liv in the absence of the Kennedys, but she can't necessarily blame them. She probably wouldn't trust herself with her own hypothetical daughter.

"So, uh…" Leon pauses and awkwardly scratches at the stubble that peppers the sides of his face to buy enough time to muster the courage to ask what comes next, "What happened?"

It's a valid question that even she asks herself.

"I don't know." She admits and laughs bitterly before adding, "I was hoping you would."

Leon smiles wryly and slips his phone out of his pocket, hoping to see some sort of response from Claire or Chris. In light of the recent attack in Fukuoka, both the B.S.A.A. and TerraSave had called for an emergency meeting and he was antsy for it to end. He didn't feel comfortable leaving Jill alone, but he wasn't particularly fond of hospitals and was more than eager to leave.

"They think it's just a fainting spell." Leon waves his hand as though he isn't surprised by the discovery and focuses on the bony prominences that line the front of her chest. "Have you been eating well?"

Jill feels like a deer caught in the headlights.

"I guess I could do better." She confesses sheepishly with a flush surfacing on her cheeks.

The door to her room swings open with such force that it loudly slams against the nearby wall and she's not surprised to see Chris rush through. His lips are pulled into a stern line and she can make out the wrinkles of worry that crease his forehead as he all but rushes to her bedside, hesitating only to give Leon a curt nod of unspoken appreciation for having stayed by her side.

"God, Jill...what happened?"

She wishes they'd stop asking her that.

"I guess I just fainted." She lies, but the image of Wesker's eyes melting down his face flashes through her mind when she closes her eyes. Jill doesn't think it's as simple a syncopal episode, but she doesn't really know what else it could have been. Granted, she doesn't allow herself to explore any further possibilities because she isn't sure that she wants to know.

Chris pulls a chair to the side of the bed and takes her hand in his. Her hand is so small and delicate compared to his and her skin feels so cold that he envelops it with both of his palms in an attempt to warm her.

"We should go see Rebecca." He speaks with a sense of authority, suggests it as though he's a father tricking his child into thinking she has an option.

Jill sighs and shakes her head, but she keeps her stare fixed on the wrinkles in the sheets. She can't bear to look at him, not when he has that worried, soft look in his eyes that makes her feel so guilty. A moment of silence passes and she focuses on the warmth of his callused skin against hers.

"For the record," Leon interrupts, clearing his throat awkwardly, "I think you should see Rebecca too."

Jill wonders if she still has the strength and finesse to take him down with just her thighs alone, but she's greeted by a nurse with discharge papers before she gets the chance to test herself.

"You're releasing her already?" Chris asks incredulously, arms crossed over his chest in a way that emphasizes the bulk of his build.

The nurse opens her mouth to speak, but Jill interrupts with a grateful nod of her head and a sharp look in Chris's direction.

"I was probably just dehydrated, Chris." She rolls her shoulders in a nonchalant shrug as she scribbles her name across the bottom of the paperwork.

'_In Ever Loving Memory of Our Dear Jill Valentine.'_

_It had been strange to stand at the foot of her own tombstone. Jill had read the inscription a hundred times over, but her mind still hadn't been able to process the fact that she had been declared dead. Chris had told her, yes, but seeing the grave gave the claim a particular sense of...truth. She felt gooseflesh surface on her skin, hair standing on end as she swept her eyes over the words again and again. _

"_I'm sorry, Jill. We shouldn't have come here."_

_Chris wrapped an arm around her as he stood beside her, watching the way her jaw clenched and her body stiffened. In response, she only shook her head._

"_No, it's fine. I'm just...disappointed," She lied, "No ode to 'the Master of Unlocking' or 'Jill Sandwich' references? Come on."_

_Jill forced a laugh and buried her face in her hands in an attempt to subtly brush away the tears that threatened to fall. She wasn't sure which was worse-her actual gravesite or the had one she imagined in her nightmares._

_Somehow, she suspected she might prefer the latter._

Chris treats her like glass when they get home, wraps an arm around her as he helps her out of the car. She gives him an annoyed look but it doesn't deter him; instead, he maintains a grip on her even after they've made it inside. He steers her toward the bedroom wordlessly and maneuvers her to the foot of the bed, urging her to take a seat.

"Please rest." He all but begs, kneeling down in front of her with her hands in his.

In this position, she can see the signs of age on his face. Chris Redfield is just as breathtaking as he was the first time she laid eyes on him in the precinct, perhaps even more so now. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the once smooth surface of his forehead that make themselves known when he's giving her that guilt-inducing look of concern hint at his age. His shoulders are wide, impossibly so, and though he'd always been stocky, he had never been quite like this. It's yet another thing she blames herself for. Claire had once admitted that she had lost her brother to heavy weights and booze after Jill had been declared dead.

"I'm really alright." She attempts to assure him, but Jill knows it's futile.

He's staring at her face, but she's seen this look before. Chris doesn't really see her-he's somewhere else, somewhere far away, so far out that he's barely a speck on the edge of the horizon.

"Chris."

The sound of her voice isn't enough to catch his attention, so she takes his face in her hands. The short, fine hairs of a five o' clock shadow that has started to surface along the sides of his face are rough beneath her palms that have grown tender with time spent away from field work and she traces her thumbs along the soft skin that stretches over his cheekbones.

What would her life have been like without Chris Redfield at her side? It's an alternate scenario that she doesn't particularly want to explore in detail because she knows he's the best thing that's ever happened to her. Part of her feels as though she cheated him in some way, as if she had unintentionally performed some mendacious act to fool him into thinking she was worthy of him. Chris Redfield was a force of nature personified, passionate and powerful in all things he did, and she was just…

"_I'm beginning to see what Chris sees in you, Valentine."_

_There was smirk on Wesker's face as he wiped away the blood that dribbled along the contours of his lips and chin with the back of his hand. Jill's knuckles stung, skin broken from the force with which she had thrown her punch, and she found herself to be stunned by the discovery that Wesker bled red just like the rest of them._

"_Surprising, really," He amusedly mused aloud, casually strolling across the exam room to retrieve a tissue to blot at his crooked nose, "You were always so plain."_

_Had his backhanded insult come from anyone else's mouth, she supposed it might have hurt her in some way._

"_Jill Valentine. So boring and textbook." He continued, pulling the tissue away to study the pattern of blood stained on its surface. "And so...predictable."_

_Wesker's expression changed to that of a wolfish smile._

"_But this...this is unexpected." He spoke animatedly, almost excitedly. "Jill Valentine has a breaking point."_

_Jill shivered as he moved closer to reach for her face, but she moved with an uncharacteristic speed to swat his hand away. In response, Wesker simply laughed and, before she could register his movement, she found herself crippled on the cold tile floor with her hands clenched to her throbbing abdomen. Wesker loosened his fist and kneeled down beside her to lower his sunglasses and reveal his fiery eyes._

"_I look forward to absolutely destroying you, Miss Valentine."_

Chris loves her despite the ghosts he sees flash through her pale irises. She's Jill, _his_ Jill, and he knows she's still there despite the screams that tear from her throat in the midst of the night and the way she silently pleads for him not to leave her alone lest her demons get the best of her. The others don't know her the way he does. To them, she's a ticking time bomb, a B.O.W. disguised as their fallen comrade lying in wait for the perfect opportunity to strike.

To him, she's everything he could have asked for and more.

"I love you," He splutters, his mouth moving faster than his mind, "And I want you to be okay."

Jill finds herself frozen by his words, the pads of her thumbs still resting against the crests of his cheekbones. As she looks into his warm, soft gaze, she feels guilty for the worry he feels, the anxiety she's caused him. Jill knows Chris is better off without her, but a selfish part of her can't bear to let him go.

"I love you." She chokes on the lump that's starting to form in her throat.

She leans forward and kisses him with a gentle press of warm lips and fingers that tangle in the short, dark strands of his hair. Tense muscles relax beneath her hand that shifts to the curve of his shoulder and his hands move. Chris presses a palm to the dip in her spine to pull her forward, bringing her off the edge of the bed to force her body flush against his as he moves to stand. His other hand nestles in the curve of her waist and he makes a quiet sound against her mouth.

Jill curls a hand around the edge of his bicep and rises onto her tiptoes to kiss him more fully. He takes advantage of her position and allows his hand to move lower, halting at the small of her back to slip his fingers beneath the edge of her navy blue shirt. She inhales sharply at the feel of his skin on hers and gently takes his lower lip between her teeth, urging him to continue his exploration.

Chris is fluent in the language of her body and he doesn't miss a single beat. He carefully presses his hips against hers and she can feel him against her hip, hard, ready, and eager. Another insistent buck of his hips convinces her to step back towards the mattress and he cradles her in his arms as he lowers her back down to the bedspread. Idly, he hovers over her, his eyes locked with hers in an unspoken question-are you _sure_?

"I'm positive, Chris." She whispers, reaching up to trail her fingers along his chest despite the thick fabric of his shirt.

Though he's always been known for his insubordination, Chris finds that he never has to be told twice when Jill's doing the commanding. He kisses her slowly and intently, purposefully and hungrily as he lowers his body to hers while keeping one arm braced against the mattress to keep from smothering her with his weight. With his opposite hand, he cups the side of her face, angling her chin just right to slip his tongue against hers.

Despite the changes Wesker had imposed on her, she still tastes the same-refreshing and familiar, like a cool, tall drink of water. Jill has always been a relief for him, a calming presence in the midst of the chaos of bioterrorism that had taken over his life. She was the polar opposite of him-collected, thoughtful, and methodical, the opposite side of the same coin. Chris admired her as much as he loved her and, despite his best efforts, Wesker wasn't able to change that.

Chris pulls away to take in a deep, ragged breath as his heart pounds wildly in his chest. Jill's eyes are heavily lidded as she looks up at him, her lips flushed red and pale hair splayed out on the sheets below her. She's perfect, always so perfect, but if he squints hard enough, he can still see the dark-haired brunette he first bedded the night after enduring the Spencer Mansion.

_He wrote off the first series of knocks as the product of an auditory hallucination. It was half past two in the morning and Chris was hunched over the edge of his desk as he pored over the notes he had jotted down upon arriving back in Raccoon City. He couldn't recall the last time he had truly slept. Not since before Arklay, that was for certain._

_Each time he closed his eyes, he was haunted by the sight of Kenneth splayed out on the carpet, gurgling and suffocating on his own blood. Chris shook his head and buried his face in his hands, willing the thought from his mind, but the soft rapping came once more. _

_Snatching up the Samurai Edge from the corner of his desk, Chris made his way to the entrance of his apartment. With his ear pressed against the surface of the door, he listened for the low groans of the undead, but was met with silence. Holding his breath, he ripped open the door, pistol drawn and ready to fire._

_Jill seemed unfazed by the violent greeting and simply stood with her hands raised in surrender and a sad, soft smile on her face. Immediately, Chris lowered his weapon and began to mumble an apology._

"_I couldn't sleep." She interrupted, stepping towards him and into the opening of his apartment._

"_I...me neither." He confessed, suddenly feeling self conscious about the dark half-moons that lingered beneath his eyes._

_Before he could further fumble for words, Jill closed the distance between them. Her hands slid up the front of his chest to rest at the back of his neck and she rose onto her tiptoes to press a slow, chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth._

"_Let me help." She whispered against the curve of his jaw and Chris slammed the door shut with enough force to wake the entire floor._

He crushes his mouth against hers, one hand cradling the back of her head as the other slides beneath the hem of her shirt. Chris's fingers trail along the flat plane of her belly and over each groove between her ribs, stopping to sweep along the underwire of her bra. She makes a quiet sound against his mouth and he breaks off the kiss to brush his lips along her jawline and the smooth column of her neck.

Jill tangles her fingers in his hair as her other hand finds a fistful of the sheets. He nips at the tender skin where her neck meets her jaw and hooks a finger around the collar of her shirt, pulling it downwards to expose the swell of her breasts. Chris dips his tongue between her collarbones and buries his face in the rough, scarred flesh of her sternum as he lifts the fabric of her shirt away from her body.

He pulls it off of her in a quick motion and lets out a quiet groan of approval at the sight of her half-exposed body. His mouth briefly meets hers once again before ghosting over the length of her throat with hot, wet, open-mouthed kisses and coming to rest at the scars on her chest. Gingerly, he presses his lips to each scar left behind by the P30 device, an unspoken apology for the damage he's partially responsible for.

His mouth trails lower to follow the curve of her breast and Jill involuntarily arches her back. He slips a hand along the length of her back, starting at her hip and ending at the clasp of her bra as he alternates between innocent kisses and subtle flicks of his tongue against her flesh. With surprising dexterity, he undoes the clasp and wastes no time in pulling the garment off of her.

Chris bites the inside of his cheek as he greedily takes in the view. Jill is all sleek, pale skin and lithe, feminine muscle beneath him and he nearly chokes when she rolls her hips forward to brush against his pelvis. She's insistent-always has been-but he's determined to savor every bit of her, to explore her as though he's never charted her territory before.

Her hands slip beneath his shirt to trail along the chiseled muscle of his torso. The chill of her skin against his heated body is strangely soothing and he grunts, muscle flexing beneath her fingertips. She appreciates the feel of him and lifts her hips again to press squarely to his and Chris thinks Jill Valentine might be the death of his patience.

He pulls off his shirt and tosses it onto the floor, a sight that Jill admires as she studies the ripple of toned muscle in his chest. She feels her heart hammer in her chest, skin hot with heedy arousal that's building between her thighs. Jill wants to feel his skin against hers, to forget where she ends and he begins, to be reminded that sterile fields and the glint of light reflecting off dark shades are ghosts of the past.

She gasps when he flits his thumb across the peak of her nipple, causing the sensitive flesh to bud and harden further. Her breasts feel heavy and full and she lets out a low whimper, a plea for him to grant her _more._ He indulges her by gliding his hands along the curves of her body, hesitating below the globes of her breasts to flick at her sensitive nipples with his thumbs.

Jill whimpers and he dips his head low to press the flat of his tongue against her hardened nipple. She clenches her eyes closed and tries desperately to focus on anything but the pressure building between her thighs, but then he slips his hand beneath the waistband of her pants and cups her through the delicate lace of her panties.

"God, Jill." He murmurs against her breast, grazing his teeth over the tip of her nipple. "I missed this."

She hums in response because of _course_ she missed this too. Jill can't help but to rock her hips forward, causing his fingers to brush over her entrance. She gasps and takes fistfuls of the sheets as he pushes the flimsy fabric aside to slip his finger along the slick surface of her clit, forcing her hips to ungracefully jerk forward.

Jill thrashes her head to the side as he kisses along the length of her body, lips moving along the jut of her hip and over the top of her thigh as he peels away the last of her clothing. Gently, he parts her legs and she feels his hot, moist breath against her sex. Perhaps, she thinks, she should be embarrassed, but he doesn't give her the opportunity to feel shame. Before she can think too deeply about it, he buries his face between her legs and laps at her like she's the last sustenance on earth.

She all but howls in response to his ministrations. He feels her tangle her fingers in his hair and push his face just a _little_ closer and he can't help but smile against her. She's lost, writhing and gasping and unraveling beneath him, and he wants to believe that it's enough to make her forget that the rest of the world exists.

When she opens her eyes, she sees the dark, hazy figure looming in the doorway of their bedroom. She stiffens beneath Chris, but he doesn't relent. He teases her with the tip of his tongue, drags the flat of it along her entrance, sucks at her sensitive skin and she finds it hard to register the laughter that comes from behind him when he's doing such _wonderful_ things to her body.

"_He doesn't love you." _A bored voice drones and she hears Wesker's familiar footsteps echo against the wooden floor.

Jill grits her teeth together, digs her nails into Chris's shoulder as she feels her climax building. She doesn't want to listen to it because she knows it's not _real._ She's heard these words before, but they no longer mean anything because Wesker is _dead_ and she is _free._

Wesker chuckles from somewhere in the distance, but she keeps her eyes clenched shut as the throbbing of her sex becomes nearly unbearable.

"_How could he love someone like that?"_ He teases as Chris pulls her knees over his shoulders, angling her hips just _right_, "_Plain, predictable Jill."_

It's not _real._

She focuses on the heat of his mouth, so close to coming undone. Her hips are grinding on their own accord and Chris slips a finger inside of her slick entrance, causing her to cry out.

"_Boring, boring Jill…"_

Jill lets out a frustrated sound and thrusts her hips forward, causing Chris to tumble back onto the floor. She slips off the side of the bed and shoves his shoulders, prompting him to lie back against the cold flooring. With deft hands, she undoes the fly of his pants and watches him spring free from his cloth confines, hard and thick and already slick with need.

She straddles his hips and braces her hands against his chest before lowering herself onto his length. Jill hisses as she feels him part her and she pauses, wincing as she stretches to accommodate his girth. Chris wraps his hands around the outside of her thighs and cranes his neck, giving her a concerned look, but she leans forward to catch his mouth with hers as she sinks down to take him in his entirety.

He moans into her mouth, lost in the sensation of being enveloped in her slick heat. His eyes are dark, pupils dilated as he lays back to watch her ride him, attention shifting from the bounce of her breasts to the glistening of her arousal along his length. Jill rocks her hips steadily, her movements powerful and purposeful as she bounces in his lap, and it isn't long before he cries out her name and fills her with the hot, sticky bulk of his seed. His body feels weightless and his muscles are weak, but he slips a hand between where they're joined and rubs fast, furious circles against her swollen clit until she comes with him still sheathed inside of her.

They're both panting when they come to with Jill still situated on his hips. Her vision is hazy, but she hears the click of Wesker's soles against the flooring, and it makes bile rise in her throat.

"_This is...unexpected."_

She swallows down her nausea and leans forward to kiss Chris, her hand slipping in the sweat that slicks his chest.

"I..._wow_." He's at a loss for words, lips still hovering just above hers, "It's been a while."

Jill laughs as she rises, instantly regretting the loss of him inside of her.

"I'm sorry for that." She says, voice hoarse with regret as she offers him a hand to help him back to his feet.

Chris pulls her into an embrace when she stands and cradles her head against his chest with a strong, warm palm.

"Don't ever be sorry. Not to me." He whispers into her hair. "But, if you insist, you can make it up to me by joining me in the shower."

Jill laughs as he leads her to the bathroom, but she takes one final look at the room from over her shoulder and is pleased to find that she's not met with fluorescent lights and a wicked smirk, no scent of clinical-grade antiseptic or scorching irises.

Not this time.

* * *

"_Jill._"

Jill looks over at Rebecca with a raised eyebrow, curious to know when the girl managed to grow the backbone to scold her as though she were her mother. Though she still boasted short hair and wide eyes, age had left a mark on her, as well. Gone were the full, rounded cheeks of her youth, leaving Rebecca with well-deserved, mature grace that added to the professionalism of the white coat she wore.

"_Rebecca._" Jill teases in kind, but she doesn't receive a positive response from Rebecca.

"You've lost eight pounds." Rebecca remarks with a sigh as she looks over the pages of Jill's curiously thick medical record.

Chris narrows his eyes and gives Jill a sharp look and she simply shrugs.

"I just...don't have much of an appetite." She explains, hoping to absolve herself from the critical scrutiny of her companions.

Rebecca purses her lips as she takes a seat in a chair nearby, rolling towards the exam table to sit beside Jill.

"You know there's medication for that, right?" She asks, voice soft, "Megestrol has good results and…"

Jill wrinkles her nose, effectively causing Rebecca to fall into silence.

"No medications." Jill insists, feeling a little dizzy at the mere mention of it. She could still vividly recall the chilling rush of intravenous infusions and the burn of injections from _before _and it was more than enough to deter her from the idea. If it came down to it, she'd force feed herself before choking down a pill.

Rebecca sighs and Chris begins to protest, but she points a finger at him accusingly.

"Patient autonomy, Chris. Jill has the right to refuse." She warns and Jill smiles, touched by her advocacy.

Rebecca sets the file down on a nearby table and stands, pulling a stethoscope from her pocket. She rests a hand on Jill's shoulder and leans forward to press the cold, metal diaphragm against her skin, instructing her to breathe and relax in various intervals. It makes her uncomfortable to be under medical inspection despite the fact that Rebecca is her clinician and she squirms uncomfortably where she sits.

"Everything sounds fine." Rebecca announces and Chris lets out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "But I'm going to draw lab work just to be safe."

Jill opens her mouth to oppose but Rebecca places a finger over her lips, lulling her into silence.

"It'll be off the record, Jill." She assures, "Completely anonymous. I _promise._"

"Alright." Jill surrenders and leans back against the table with her arm extended outwards, a practiced offering of access to her blood vessels.

"But," She says, "You know what they say…'_don't ask, don't tell.'_"

"_Jill._" Both Rebecca and Chris retort harshly in unison and Jill sighs.

"Okay."

She wonders if she'll come to regret this, but the perturbed crease of Chris's eyebrows is enough to force her to submit.

* * *

Thank you so much for the reviews, follows, and favorites. I'm really sorry for the dull update here...I've somehow fallen into the deep, dark pit that is writer's block and I've decided that the only way to climb out is to force myself to work through it. Hurrah!


	3. Chapter 3

The longer she stares, the more frustrating it becomes.

Jill narrows her eyes as she glares hard at the pale grey wall of Claire's dining room with her brow furrowed in frustration. A small black speck stands out against the otherwise immaculate surface, round and conspicuous in nature. Each time she blinks, it seems to dart to a new position along the face of the wall, but no one else appears to be concerned with its behavior. The others are far too buried in the conversation regarding the latest bioterroristic threat in Fukuoka and Jill oddly feels like a kid seated at the adults-only table during Thanksgiving dinner.

"It's probably another mutation of Uroboros, right?" Leon asks with a grimace.

Claire sighs and nods her head remorsefully as she absentmindedly trails the tip of her index finger along the base of her wine glass, whispering, "That's what the first responders are saying."

Jill watches the muscle in Chris's jaw flex as he grits his teeth in annoyance, his gaze fixed on the space on the wall behind Claire. He seems unfazed by the presence of the mysterious spot and Jill blinks particularly hard, tightly clenching her eyes closed for a brief moment in the hope that it will clear it from her sight.

It doesn't.

"How many casualties?"

Chris's arms are propped up on the surface of the table and his hand curls into a fist before he can finish asking the question.

Claire sighs again.

"Too many." She punctuates the vague response with a healthy gulp of alcohol.

Jill can't seem to look away from that stupid spot. It almost appears to be taunting her in some strange way as it flits about during each blink she makes. The dot is unsettling, dark enough to make her wonder if it could perhaps be a hole of some sort, an entry into some alternate dimension in space. If she reached out, would she be able to touch it?

_"Hallucinating again, are we?"_

She manages to tear her attention away from the spot at the sound of that infuriating voice. Languidly, she tilts her head to the side to glare at the doorway that leads to the kitchen and isn't surprised to see Wesker leaning up against it. Jill can't refrain from rolling her eyes at the sight of his dark shades that are slipping down the bridge of his nose as he regards her with a judgmental look.

_If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all._

Her focus returns to the speck on the wall. She can hear Leon talking, but he might as well have been speaking a foreign language given her inability to make out any of the words he's speaking.

Jill thinks they're bound to notice it eventually.

_"No one sees it but you, Jill."_

She wrinkles her nose at his words. _Does the omniscient villain read minds now?_ In response, Wesker laughs and it makes her feel sick to her stomach.

Jill thinks she sees movement from the damned spot on the wall and she silently smiles to herself, feeling victorious for having caught it in the act. Squinting, she watches it intently as the outer edge of the sphere becomes irregularly shaped. She doesn't realize what's happening until a squirming, wriggling pustule tumbles down the length of the wall and splatters against the hardwood flooring.

In its wake, more worms follow. They writhe and slither in a uniform line down the length of wall and pool around the gore of the first. In the warm, inviting light of Claire's dining room, they glisten and shine while rolling around in the viscera of their fallen.

She knows what this is - Uroboros. Ravenous, relentless, unforgiving Uroboros. She's well acquainted with the beast, so why is it that she finds herself frozen in her chair?

Uroboros gathers. It wriggles and squirms as it rises in height and Jill's eyes widen slightly as the inky tendrils begin to claim the side of Claire's chair. She watches Uroboros teasingly glide along the frame of the chair as if it's attempting to provoke her into reacting. It's taunting her, Jill thinks, and she tells herself she won't let it win. Instead, she turns back to the conversation at hand.

"Bravo team was deployed last night. Delta is still at the heart of the insurgency."

Jill can hear the slimy, slick suction of the worm-like creature maneuvering about. She closes her eyes and wills her mind to preoccupy itself with anything else. Her respiratory rate increases, but she doesn't notice. She doesn't even notice Claire's hand resting over hers once the woman has reached across the table to stir her from her reverie.

"Jill?" She asks, voice marked with concern, "Are you alright?"

She doesn't need to open her eyes to know all eyes are on her.

"Yeah," she lies with a forced smile, "Just a little tired."

When Jill opens her eyes, her attention is immediately directed to the thick, black ropes that encircle Claire's neck. Uroboros pulsates and twists around the circumference of Claire's neck and Jill swallows hard as the loose loop of tentacles grows tighter. _It's not real,_ she tells herself, _be cool._

Claire gives her a sympathetic nod and looks over to Chris. She's speaking, but Jill can't hear it. All she can hear is the wet, squelching sounds of Uroboros's slimy hold on Claire's throat.

"_Aren't you going to save her? She is a Redfield, after all." _Wesker taunts as he steps into Jill's line of sight.

She hadn't realized that he was still milling about. Jill looks away, but it feels like a weight has settled upon her chest. With each ragged inspiration of air that she takes, she feels something flutter in her chest. It's panic, _definitely_ panic, but she doesn't want to give in.

"_You're just going to let her suffer?" _

There's an amused look on Wesker's face as Uroboros begins to work its way along the length of Claire's body. It slips around her shoulders, encircles her arms, begins to slither up her jaw.

"_My, my. Perhaps we have more in common than I thought."_

Jill openly laughs.

"Just give it a rest, will you?" Jill smirks to herself as she continues. "I'll never be the monster you want me to be."

She had forgotten about her audience and she jumps slightly when Claire asks, "Jill? Who are you talking to?"

This time, Wesker laughs. He leans against the wall and crosses his arms over his chest with this stupid, feral grin that Jill wants to knock off his face with her fist.

"_Oh, Miss Valentine, that remains to be seen."_

Jill lets out a shaky sigh and shrugs as she wears a sheepish smile. Uroboros slides across the table and licks at her fingers that are fanned across its surface.

"Me?" She lets out a confused laugh. "I didn't say anything. I must have fallen asleep for a minute there."

Jill swallows, deafened by the loud thrumming of her heartbeat in her ears. One of the dark tendrils wraps around her finger.

"Sleep talking, probably." She hastily adds.

No one looks convinced, but they let her play the lie anyway.

* * *

From the safety of their bedroom, Claire confides in Leon once Chris and Jill have left.

"Something isn't right," she says quietly, somewhat distracted by her own thoughts as she adds, "I'm worried."

Leon pauses thoughtfully in the midst of pulling off his shirt, leaving the fabric bunched around his shoulders and his chest bare.

"I think you're overthinking it, Claire." He finally says before tossing his shirt onto the bed.

She shoots him a hard glare and gestures towards the laundry basket nearby. Leon gives her a sheepish smile and lifts his discarded shirt from the bed to toss it into the pile of dirty clothing.

"I'm telling you, Leon," Claire insists as she's pulling her hair back into a messy bun, "I've known Jill for a long time. This...isn't like her."

Leon stretches out on his side of the bed and boredly scrolls through his emails on his phone.

"Trauma does weird things to people, Claire," He gives her a quick glance from the corner of his eye, "It can make you into someone you're not. She's probably just having a hard time right now."

They rarely speak about it, but Claire knows what he means. There had once been a time in which Leon found comfort in the bottom of a shot glass, a period of his life in which there was no greater therapy than that of alcohol. He had lost himself for a while, became a man who neither of them could recognize and one that he was embarrassed to admit to have been.

Leon S. Kennedy knew grief. Even more so, he knew how to cope in the worst ways possible. Claire had experienced her own strife in her lifetime, but she never had to face it alone. Chris had always offered her a shoulder to cry on or a strong arm to lift her from even the deepest pits she dug herself into.

Claire sat on the edge of the bed and sighed dejectedly.

"I know, but…" She wrinkled her brow as she hesitated, "This time, I really feel like it's _different._"

Leon taps the side of his phone to put it to sleep with an audible _click_ and he places it onto the bedside table. The springs in the mattress squeak as he sits up and slides across the width of the bed to position himself behind his wife. His arms envelop her waist and he drapes his legs along either side of her as he allows his chin to rest on her shoulder.

"If Chris needs your help, he'll ask for it." He murmurs against her ear and nibbles along the length of her neck.

Claire pulls away and cranes her neck to give him a skeptical look.

"Let Chris worry about Jill, okay?" He all but pleads as he nuzzles his face into the side of her neck. "You have plenty to worry about. Chris is a big boy. He can take care of her."

"Yeah, but…" She inhales sharply as his tongue glides over the pulse point in her neck, "What if he goes to Fukuoka? What if he leaves her _here_ again?"

Leon breathes over the wet trail his tongue left behind, causing Claire to shiver as he whispers, "What if Lickers fly out of my ass?"

Spinning around, Claire elbows him hard in the ribs.

"Leon!" She hisses between giggles, "I'm serious!"

He shrugs as he wraps his arms around her again, pulling her against his chest and into an embrace.

"So am I." He asserts. "Would you still love me?"

"Would I still love you with Lickers falling out of your ass?" She asks incredulously and Leon nods.

"Hell no."

Leon pouts and gives her a pained look.

"You'd leave me just like that? What about Liv?"

Claire shakes her head and gives him a look of disgust.

"Trust me, Liv doesn't want a dad who has Lickers flying out of his ass either."

* * *

Chris doesn't ask Jill about it because he knows that, if she wanted to discuss it, she would. He doesn't want to force her to talk about it when she isn't ready out of fear that it'll do more harm than good, so he simply waits for her to approach the topic on her own terms.

She's silent on the ride home, so he plays music to occupy his mind. Once they step foot in the safety of their own home, she crashes into him before he has the chance to engage the deadbolt on the door. Still, he wraps his arms around her, pulling her body flush to his, and buries his face in the crown of her head.

They stand like that for a while, clinging to one another as if their lives depend on it.

"I'm scared." Jill confesses, her voice muffled by the fabric of his t-shirt.

"Scared of what?" He asks after a moment of silence.

Jill pulls her face away from his chest and looks up at him with wet eyes and flushed cheeks. It breaks his heart to see her like this-Jill Valentine, the strongest woman he had ever known, reduced to tears by something that he can't chase away for her.

It reminds him of Raccoon City.

_He listened in stunned silence as Jill detailed her escape from the Pursuer._

"_It...went after S.T.A.R.S.? Stalked you?" Chris asked, stunned by the fact that the Tyrant could seemingly be programmed._

_She nodded her head as she looked down at her feet. _

"_Yeah. I...hated facing it alone."_

_Jill visibly shivered and Chris learned just how much he hated the taste of regret in that moment. Why the hell did he have to go to Europe in the first place? Why didn't he take her with him?_

"_Jill, I…" He clenched his eyes closed to ward away tears, "I'll make sure that you never have to face anything alone again. I promise that I'm going to always stay by your side from here on out. Partners 'til the end."_

What a lie that ended up being. Had he not been so hot-headed, maybe things would have ended a hell of a lot differently. Maybe O'Brian wouldn't have reassigned him to Sherawat and let them get so rusty. Maybe, when it mattered, he would have been the one to soar out the window instead.

Chris cups her face in his hands and brushes his thumbs across her cheeks, smearing her tears over her skin. She's beautiful even when she's crying and he wonders if Wesker thought the same when he pulled her from that river, battered, broken, and frozen down to the bone.

"I…" She laughs bitterly before she manages to muster up the courage to continue, "I think I'm losing my mind."

He runs his fingers down the length of her spine and smiles into her hair.

"No, babe, that's called pushing forty."

They both laugh, but it doesn't put either of them at ease.

"I see _him_ sometimes." Jill whispers and Chris temporarily feels like the bottom of his stomach has fallen out.

A fire ignites within him, one that fumes so hotly that he feels as though he's filled with smoke. He feels like combustion and flame, like a spark with no ignition, and it makes him even _angrier. _Even in death, Wesker can't _fuck off?_ Even in death, he has to continue to torment her?

"Fuck that." Chris spats, tightening his hold on her to the point that it stings, but she doesn't tell him so. "Nothing is left of that fucker."

Zombies are real, so he wonders if ghosts could be too. God knows Claire had tried a thousand and one times to summon their parents with a Ouija board when they were kids, but always to no avail. He'd always been a skeptic, but, if it helped Jill sleep at night, he'd hire every exorcist, witch doctor, and self-proclaimed ghost hunter in the country if that was what it took.

"I know." Jill responds, "I know...and so does he."

She gives him this pathetic look, one that's all wide eyes and a lip that's swollen from being worried between teeth. It doesn't suit her. Not his Jill.

"Maybe he should go fall in a ditch then." He says, "Preferably one six feet under."

He tries to make light of it, but the confession scares the shit out of him. How should one handle the fact that their girlfriend is hallucinating their worst enemy? How should one help their girlfriend who's haunted by the man who brainwashed her and made her into a weapon?

"Did you…" He winces before finishing, "...tell Rebecca?"

Jill shakes her head.

"No more medicine, Chris." She pleads.

Chris searches her face for a moment, takes in the desperate look in her eyes before surrendering.

"Alright," Chris almost cringes at the waver in his voice, "We can figure this one out...together."

He doesn't know where to begin.

* * *

Rebecca can't believe what she's seeing.

Leaning back from the eyepiece of the microscope, she rubs her eyes with the back of her knuckles. She had been poring over Jill's medical records long enough to make herself cross-eyed, so she wouldn't be surprised if it was making her hallucinate, too. After taking a long, cleansing breath, she returns to the microscope and gasps quietly to herself.

So her eyes hadn't been deceiving her after all. Jill's granulocytes _had_ changed.

Squinting her eyes, she leans a little further into the eyepiece to observe a small, wriggling microorganism as it bursts through the wall of a eosinophil. Rebecca pulls back and grimaces. Her hand trembles as she scrawls something down on a sheet of lined paper attached to Jill's chart.

Jill's body was at war...but what was it fighting?

"You coming to bed anytime soon, Beck?"

The sound of his smooth, deep voice catches her off guard and she nearly leaps out of her skin in surprise. Rebecca rapidly spins about in her chair to face Billy as he leans in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest and a sly smirk on his face.

"In a minute." She says crossly, barely giving him much of a glance before turning back to her specimen.

Within the lens of the microscope, she watches a neutrophil attempt to engulf the microorganism, but to no avail. The little creature latches onto it and it shrivels into nothingness before her very eyes.

"What's so important that it can't be left at work?"

His voice is closer now and, soon after he speaks, she feels his warm palm on her shoulder.

"Looking into some things off the record," She explains, "For a...friend."

"Off the record, huh?" She hears the amusement in his voice, but doesn't react. "Wouldn't have to do with that _friend_ of yours from a couple years back, would it?"

Rebecca isn't surprised that he remembers her.

_In her state of sleep, she was barely able to perceive the sound of her phone ringing. She stirred and whined softly as the chiming continued. As soon as it stopped, it seemed to pick up again, and she rolled over with a groan, thrusting her arm over the side of the bed and knocking her cell phone onto the floor._

_Even after clattering loudly onto the ground, it continued to ring. It vibrated obnoxiously against the wooden floor and Billy nudged her in the back gently._

"_Seems important, Beck." He mumbled, voice gruff with sleep._

_Rebecca buried her face in her pillow and let out a sound of frustration before clumsily untwisting herself from the sheets to retrieve her fallen phone._

"_Hello?"_

"_Becca, where are you? I...I need to see you now. It's an emergency."_

_Pulling her phone away from her face, she squinted her eyes at the bright light on the display. It was Chris, just as she had thought, but...why was Chris calling her at three in the morning?_

"_What…?"_

_Her mind was foggy with sleep, unable to process the sudden influx of information._

"_Becca! Are you home? We need you!"_

"_We…?" She squeaked. "Y-yeah, I'm home."_

"_ETA 15 minutes."_

_Even after the line went dead, she continued to hold the phone to her face with her lips parted in surprise. Billy rolled over to face her, already alert from the sound of shouting on the opposite end of the phone. _

"_What's going on?" He sat up as he asked, raking his hands through his hair._

"_I, uh…" She lowered her phone from her face and stared at the black screen, "Chris is on the way."_

"_Chris?"_

_Rebecca nodded._

"_He's, um...he was in S.T.A.R.S. with me. Alpha team. He...saved my life in the mansion."_

_Billy nodded and leaned back against the pillows._

"_What's got him all riled up at three in the fuckin' morning?"_

_Rebecca slipped on a pair of sweatpants that had been discarded beside the bed._

"_I don't know, but it must be serious," She mused aloud, "Chris isn't the type to overreact."_

_After running her fingers through her hair to smooth out the tangles, she hesitated in the doorway to give Billy a warning look from over her shoulder._

"_St-"_

"_Stay back here." He interrupted with a coy smile. "Don't let him know you're harboring a dead fugitive. I know, Beck."_

_She gave him a sad smile before heading to the living room just in time to be greeted with staggeringly loud rapping at the door. _

_Rebecca didn't expect the sight that greeted her. Chris had his arm tightly wrapped around the waist of a woman who was slumped over with her blonde hair obscuring her face. The pale skin of her chest was exposed by the open zipper of her catsuit, her sternum marred by deep, tunneled wounds that freely gushed blood._

"_Chris, what's…"_

_The woman's head lolled to the side, causing the hair to fall away._

"_Oh my god, Chris...is that…?"_

"_Yeah," His voice was strained, panicked, "I...she's going to die if you can't help her, Becca."_

_He cleared his throat before clarifying, "Again, I mean."_

_With her heart thrumming hard against the wall of her chest, Rebecca stepped back to grant him space to enter._

"_I'll do my best."_

Her previous words ring loudly in her head and she nods, feeling a little dizzy. How is it that she's found herself in this situation once more?

"What is it this time?" He asks, voice soft with concern.

Rebecca is at a loss for words.

"I...don't know." She avows, gesturing towards the microscope. "Her granulocytes...I've never seen anything like it."

Billy chuckles and gives her shoulder a squeeze.

"English for us dumb folk, please, Beck."

Rebecca frowns.

"It's...her white blood cells. They're what the body uses to fight off infection." She pauses for a moment, considering her next words carefully. "They're mutating..._dying."_

Something clicks in her mind and Rebecca swallows down a crippling wave of nausea.

"Oh god, Billy...she's...Jill's _infected._"

He shifts his weight from one foot to another as he inquires, "Infected with what?"

Rebecca peers into the microscope once more to watch the worm-like specimen divide and multiply.

"I…"

She feels dizzy.

"I…"

Rebecca grips the edge of the table as a sense of dread overcomes her.

"I don't know."

When she looks up at Billy, her eyes glisten with tears that threaten to fall. It's a sight he's not used to seeing and he feels as though every last drop of blood is being wrung from his heart like it's nothing more than damp laundry and it _hurts._

"How do you tell someone that they're going to die?" She whispers and Billy smiles weakly.

"Come on, Beck. I'm sure there's something that can be done."

Rebecca shakes her head.

"You don't understand, Billy," She explains, "The B.S.A.A...they'll _execute_ her."

Billy scoffs.

"That's crazy, Rebecca! Didn't you say that Chris is a part of the B.S.A.A.? They wouldn't do that."

Rebecca shakes her head.

"It doesn't matter. This...they've been afraid of Jill all along. They...they predicted this."

She begins to rapidly flip through the pages of Jill's chart.

"Whatever this is, it's…"

She peeks into the microscope and finds that the field is now entirely blacked out by the rapidly multiplying parasites.

"...it's ruthless."

* * *

The back of her throat _burns._

Jill dabs at her watering eyes with the sleeve of her shirt and reaches forward to tear a square of toilet paper off the roll. She blots it against her mouth to wipe away the saliva that's dribbled down her chin and winces at the acrid taste in her mouth. Crumpling the tissue into a ball, she moves to drop it into the toilet, but freezes mid-movement.

Among the sea of dark green vomit, a fat, wormlike creature undulates on the water's surface.

Panic-stricken, she scrambles to flush the toilet and feels hot tears stream down her face. She knows what it is, but she isn't about to admit it...not even to herself. Jill isn't going to allow herself to give it a second thought. She heads to the sink and begins to furiously brush her teeth, watching the foam drip into the bowl below.

Her mind is numb as she scours away and she doesn't realize she's bleeding until the suds that splatter into the sink have turned pink.

"_Jill, Jill, Jill…"_

Wesker steps out from behind the shower curtain and claps slowly.

"_My best specimen yet."_

She watches through the mirror as he drapes his gloved hands over her shoulders.

"Don't touch me." She hisses before spitting into the sink.

Jill rinses her mouth out as she glares at Wesker icily through the reflection in the mirror. He leans back against the wall and grins wickedly, but she ignores him by reaching for the hand towel nearby to pat her face dry.

She brushes past him as she heads back to her bedroom and finds Chris.

"He's following me." She says, gesturing behind her without breaking eye contact with him.

Chris sits upright and stares past her at the empty air. He's terrified, but he isn't going to let her know it.

"Doesn't he have something better to do?" He forces himself to joke. "Like pollute the afterlife with his bullshit or something?"

Jill shrugs as she climbs into bed and, when Chris lies back down, she lays her head on his chest and listens to the sound of his breathing.

"I love you."

"I love you too." He echoes.

Jill looks around the room and smiles when she realizes it's empty.

"He leaves when you're around." She informs him and Chris pulls her closer.

From here on out, he decides he's really never going to leave her side.

For _real_ this time.

* * *

I'm so sorry. I love you all. Thanks for all the support so far.

Thanks to Xaori for helping me make bad decisions. Read her fics - they're not as sad as mine.


	4. Chapter 4

Three hours have passed, but Rebecca is as alert as ever. Staring at the blanket of darkness that engulfs the ceiling of her bedroom, she tosses and turns. Each time she closes her eyes, she finds that the backs of her eyelids are painted with those wriggling microorganisms that she observed beneath the lens of her microscope and she hasn't realized how much time has passed until the sun's rays begin to filter through the curtains.

Rebecca doesn't sleep. She immerses herself in her research, desperate to find a solution in which she is able to _save _Jill. Despite her endeavor, the question continues to haunt her, the horrible inquiry that wonders how one should tell another that they're dying.

She can't figure out how to stop it. The little bastards squirm about in the petri dish regardless of her best efforts and she thinks it may drive her mad. Morphologically, they're reminiscent of Uroboros, but their behavior is unconventional. There is no perceptible core to be destroyed and she damn near melts the dish in an unsuccessful attempt to kill them with heat.

This isn't Uroboros.

Somehow, it's worse, and the realization makes her feel ill. Rebecca swallows a dry heave that threatens to gag her and she pulls back from her desk to bury her face in her hands. She's spent, both mentally and emotionally, but there is no time for rest. Jill is running on borrowed time and she's the only one who can help. It's a burden that's slowly crushing her, but she can't find the strength to shrug.

Billy tries to help her. He moves to sit beside her in silence as she grimaces behind the cover of her palms in an attempt to keep from bursting into tears.

"You know," He begins, voice uncharacteristically tender, "Maybe there's nothing else you can do."

Rebecca doesn't want to accept that because it's not how a heroine's story is supposed to end. Jill Valentine deserved her happily-ever-after more than anyone she knew. It doesn't make sense for the woman who devoted her life to fighting bioterrorism to succumb to the very thing she had worked so hard to destroy.

"Beck."

She knows he's speaking, but she doesn't want to hear it. Rebecca refuses to entertain the idea that Jill is without an option. She wants to see the fairytale ending in which Jill is able to exorcise the demons that haunt her and lead a quiet life free of bioterrorism with the man she loves.

Truth be told, Rebecca had always been a dreamer.

"I don't know," She whispers and nearly chokes on the lump in her throat in the process, "I don't know how."

_I don't know how to tell someone I love that they're going to die._

That's what she wants to say, but her body gets the best of her and she unravels into a soggy mess of sobs and tear-stained skin. When she agreed to personally care for Jill in order to shield her from the judgmental eye of the B.S.A.A., her intentions had been good. Rebecca had only wanted to help Jill heal, to give her an escape from bioterrorism and the skeptical scrutiny of the cold clinicians that the B.S.A.A. had to offer. She wanted to keep Jill out of quarantine and maintain her confidentiality.

Perhaps this _was_ her fault. Maybe that's where Jill had belonged all along-in quarantine, locked away in a cell and subjected to endless lab draws and physical exams. Had Rebecca not gotten involved, maybe the brilliant minds behind the B.S.A.A. would have caught her condition sooner.

Maybe they could have saved her.

As she looks down at her pale, trembling hands, Rebecca swears she can see the stain of Jill's blood that begins to surface. These hands of hers that once vowed to heal were soon to be saturated with the guilt of letting Jill Valentine die. It would perhaps be the greatest failure of her career and the first and final mistake she would allow herself to make.

"I can't do this."

Billy is rubbing these stupid, small circles along the length of her back as if it's supposed to help.

"It's not your fault."

How easy for him to say. He's not the one holding the nails to be hammered into the lid of Jill's coffin. He won't have to see her face when she tells her that her life is over, that there's nothing else to be done and she might become one of those _things _soon. Billy's not the one who failed her.

_She_ is.

"I should have been more adamant," She blurts out between snivels, "Why didn't I see the signs sooner?"

Billy sighs and lowers his head, gives it a shake of disapproval.

"You can't do that to yourself. You did what was best for her at the time and, based on the things you've told me, I don't think she ever could have lived a normal life."

Rebecca doesn't think about it because she wouldn't ever know. Jill Valentine would never get a chance to truly live because of her stupid mistake.

_Primum non nocere._

What a joke of a clinician she was.

* * *

The white noise is so loud that she fears she might have gone deaf. Jill watches Rebecca's lips move and studies the creases they inspire to form on Chris's face, but she can't make out a single syllable over the sound of the loud ringing. The small exam room is stifling and she shifts uncomfortably on the table.

"_What's the matter, Jill?"_

Jill doesn't know why she bothers to glance out of her periphery when the voice is so familiar, but she does. She's not surprised to see Excella leaned against the nearby counter with pursed lips and that judgmental glare that makes her feel so imperfect.

For a moment, Jill thinks she might be a little disappointed that she hasn't gone deaf. Hearing that woman speak again makes her want to snap her neck. At the very least, she could break her pretty face again with a well-placed jut of her knee.

"_Don't be so rude, Jill. They're talking about you." _Excella snaps as she lazily tilts her head to the side to gesture towards Rebecca and Chris.

Jill looks up at the foam tiles of the ceiling above and counts the little black specks that litter their otherwise immaculate surface. The longer she stares, the more jarring the spots become, and she half wonders if those little obsidian worms are going to squirm through like they're being forced through a styrofoam sieve.

"_You're a crazy bitch, you know that?"_

Of _course_ she knows that. She's the one seeing dead people, isn't she?

Excella struts around the exam table with a practiced sway of her hips that seem to threaten to burst free from the confines of the dark green dress she's wearing. She crosses her arms over her chest and cocks her hip to the side as she comes to a standstill and studies Jill's companions. Even in death, she's flawless, and it makes Jill sick to her stomach.

"_Poor Chris. He wasted his life on a ruined woman." _She bares her teeth into a haughty grin and laughs.

Jill smirks because she isn't the one who succumbed to Uroboros for the sake of a man who didn't love her back. Pot calling the kettle black, wasn't it? The thought earns a snarl from Excella and she hastily closes the distance between herself and Jill to bend forward at the waist and stare directly into her eyes.

"_You silly bitch," _She spats, "_You're rotting from the inside out. It's only a matter of time."_

"Oh, fuck off."

Jill grumbles as she thrusts out a palm to shove Excella away, but she's only met with empty air and a bewildered, wide-eyed look from Rebecca. The way the younger woman looks at her makes her feel guilty and she forces a warm smile.

"Not you." She clarifies and nervously looks to Chris for support in hopes that _he_ can explain the fact that she's being bullied by specters of the dead.

Chris only sighs, a sound so heavy that Jill feels as though she could collapse beneath it. She wonders if he's mad at her. Is he tired of dealing with her and the trauma that she can't seem to let go of? She wouldn't blame him if he was.

Maybe he heard Excella.

Jill parts her lips that suddenly feel incredibly dry. Anxiously, she moistens them with a quick flick of her tongue as she allows her gaze to flit between Chris and Rebecca.

"You heard her, didn't you?" She asks, voice wavering.

Rebecca and Chris share a brief, perplexed look.

"Heard who?"

Rebecca's brows are furrowed in confusion and Jill pinches the bridge of her nose in frustration. She really is a crazy bitch, isn't she? Of _course_ she didn't hear her because the fucking bitch is so dead that she doesn't think a piece of her even remains to rot in a grave.

"No one important." Jill explains as though the simple statement is enough clarification to satisfy the question.

Chris is looking at her with this soft, sad expression on his face and it makes her feel pathetic. The dejected, downward slump of his shoulders and the hint of something wet that glistens in his dark eyes nearly wounds her. She wants to pull him into an embrace and apologize, to tell him that she's sorry that she's such a crazy fucking bitch and maybe Excella was right and he should stop wasting his time on a woman who can never heal.

Jill doesn't do it because she's afraid that he might agree with Excella. Wesker had a word for that each time she begged that he return her to Chris in Kijuju - _selfish._

"Jill," He asks, "Who did you see?"

She looks down at her bare feet that dangle a foot away from the floor. The starchy linen of the gown she's been forced to wear itches and her mouth feels incredibly dry.

Why are they both looking at her like _that?_

"Excella Gionne."

The admission begets an uncomfortable silence and Jill awkwardly clears her throat.

"I'm sorry, but my mouth is so dry. Can I get a cup of water?"

Rebecca looks at her as though she's just sprouted a second head and Chris moves toward her to place a warm, heavy hand on her pale knee.

"Jill, did you hear anything that Rebecca said?"

No, she was too busy hallucinating about the woman who bullied her while in captivity. Hadn't she just told him that?

"I'm sorry," Jill murmurs sheepishly as she tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear, "I must have missed it."

Chris gives her knee a reassuring squeeze. He shoots her a boyish, sideways smile, one that accentuates the creases at the corners of his eyes and reminds her of better times. She sees a glimpse of him that she hasn't witnessed in decades, a flicker of a cocky, young cop pleased with his own tongue-in-cheek commentary behind their Captain's back.

It warms her more than his skin ever could.

He turns to Rebecca and his expression darkens.

"Can we talk outside?" He curtly asks and Rebecca looks to Jill with an unspoken question.

Still rattled by Excella's behavior, Jill nods her head without inquiring further. Rebecca and Chris share a look and he pulls the door open expectantly and waits for the clinician to leave the room. Once they've stepped outside to allow her privacy to dress, Jill finds it difficult to focus on anything but the words that echo through her head.

_You silly bitch. You're rotting from the inside out._

* * *

Chris can't believe the words that come out of Rebecca's mouth. They're terms that he's familiar with, but he can't seem to comprehend their connotation. Rebecca tells him that Jill is _infected_ and he doesn't understand what it means.

"Infected?" He repeats, voice hoarse as the word sits heavily in the back of his throat.

Rebecca nods her head, but Chris still isn't sure if Jill is unwell.

"As in a virus?" He asks for clarification.

Rebecca nods again and he suddenly can't remember what that gesture means either.

"Jill is sick?"

Rebecca finally catches on. She averts her gaze to the brightly polished tile beneath their feet and sighs. It's a strained sound, one that sounds as though it were painful to make, but Chris doesn't acknowledge that. He's still trying to figure out what the hell Rebecca is trying to say.

She seems hesitant to respond. Rebecca moistens her lips with a quick, subtle dart of her tongue and catches her lower lip between her teeth. She appears to be lost in thought and opens her mouth to speak, but only a humorless, airy excuse for a laugh escapes her.

"Chris." She pauses, mulling over her words, "Jill is…"

Jill is _what?_

He waits for a response that doesn't come as swiftly as one would hope. There's a long, uncomfortable silence that they share, one that is perhaps the longest, most excruciating moment of his life.

"Jill is infected with a new strain of virus. It's never been seen before and…"

Rebecca scrunches up her face, holds her eyes tightly closed as she struggles not to cry.

"...I don't know how to treat it."

Chris plays the words over in his head, but it's almost as though Rebecca is speaking a foreign language. How could she _not_ know how to treat it? He had devoted his life to serving the B.S.A.A. and had contributed a vast amount of research and specimen recoveries in order to arm scientists with the tools that they needed to save the fucking world from infection. How the hell could the B.S.A.A. not know how to treat it? How could they not be willing to save _Jill,_ the woman who genuinely gave her life for their cause?

"I don't understand."

His words are terse and sharp enough to make Rebecca flinch. It's a side of Chris that she hates seeing, the one that had always been reserved for the men in charge. She had always been a bystander and never on the receiving end of his aggression, but she supposed that she deserved it. After all, she was the one with Jill's blood on her hands, wasn't she?

"Jill is going to die," Rebecca finally chokes out, "And it's up to you to decide how."

Chris's world is spinning. Everything is a blur of blindingly bright white and his heart is pounding so loudly in his ears that he thinks his eardrums might burst.

"_What?"_

Rebecca lets out a strangled sob and looks away. She blots at her wet eyes with her sleeves before procuring a small package from her pocket.

"Just...take this."

She feels like she's going to vomit as she hands it over with trembling hands.

"It's up to you now, Chris. You have to choose to make the sacrifice this time."

* * *

Chris's phone goes straight to voicemail.

That in itself isn't what concerns Claire. More rather, it's the fact that she's called him five times now and hasn't received a single response. Even when he wasn't in the mood to talk, Chris would typically take a moment to send her a text - often a stupid, witty message explaining how he can't answer his phone that he's currently texting her with because he lost it.

Her brother isn't the most sociable man in the world, but he's not one to leave her hanging like this. After his disappearance to Europe during the Raccoon City Incident, she made him promise to never be so careless again. It's a pact that he had yet to break and she has an inexplicable gut feeling that something has gone terribly _wrong._

"Mom?"

Claire hums in acknowledgement as she finishes tapping the letters on her phone's screen and waits for the confirmation that her message has been sent to appear. As she taps the button to put her mobile to sleep, she catches one last glimpse of her text - _what the fuck, Chris? _\- and looks up at her daughter.

Liv sits with her face in her hands, cheeks made rounder by the way she presses them with her palms. Her lips are pursed into a pout and she bats the long, blonde eyelashes that frame her icy blue eyes. The waitress whisks by to collect her empty plate and Claire looks down at the pasta she's hardly even picked at and feels a little guilty for letting her anxiety over Chris consume their time together.

"Did something bad happen at work?" She innocently asks and Leon clears his throat noisily.

Claire shakes her head and smiles at her daughter as she takes a bite of her now cold pasta.

"Oh no, I'm just trying to get in touch with Uncle Chris," She says, voice extraordinarily chipper, "He's not answering his phone."

Liv blows a raspberry and rolls her eyes.

"Uncle Chris is probably too busy talking about Aunt Jill to answer the phone."

Claire wonders if there's a semblance of truth in that statement. She thinks about Jill's bizarre behavior the last time she saw her and her heart skips a beat. Could something have happened to her? Why wouldn't Chris have told her?

"Would you like a box?"

The waitress gestures towards her nearly full plate and it takes Claire a moment to realize what she's asking. Politely, she declines and requests the check instead.

"I already paid," Leon remarks, annoyance evident in his voice, "While you were staring at your phone."

She lightly elbows him in the side and gives him a pointed look.

"You know what I'm worried about." Claire hisses with a scowl.

Olivia tugs at the back of her shirt as they head out the door.

"What are you worried about, mom?"

Claire feigns a smile and lies in a way that only a parent could.

"I'm just worried that Uncle Chris is talking about Aunt Jill so much that it's boring everyone."

Olivia accepts the answer as she climbs into the backseat of their sedan, clicks her seatbelt into place, and nods her head.

"That sounds like something Uncle Chris would do."

She can't help but to compulsively check her phone on the way home. Each time they hit a red light, she shoves it away into the pocket of her jacket, but its weight feels like a burden. She's eager to retrieve it and take a peek at her notifications each time they shift back into motion and Leon looks over at her from the driver's seat with a sigh.

"Chris is fine, Claire." He attempts to assure her and she peers into the rearview mirror to find their daughter fast asleep.

"I can't shake the feeling that something is wrong," Claire explains, "It's like Raccoon City all over again."

Leon knows firsthand how jarring it was for her. They had met that night during the seemingly never ending rain in the midst of the zombie apocalypse when all Claire had intended to do was find her brother and ensure that he was safe. Zombies, bioterrorism, and an orphaned twelve-year-old girl were much more than she had bargained for and, though she played it cool even after all these years, he knew it had an effect on her.

"It's not Raccoon City, Claire."

As he attests such, he reaches over to take her hand into his and interlaces their fingers together. Leon squeezes his wife's hand gently and averts his eyes from the road for a brief second in order to grin at her.

Even after they've made it home and Liv is snugly tucked away in bed, Claire can't seem to find ease. She shifts in her seat on the couch and nervously bounces her knee as they binge on some television drama that Leon insists on watching. Her eyes are glued to the flat screen, but she couldn't even list the names of the characters that act out their lives on its surface. Her mind is preoccupied with her phone that's pressed flush up against the outer edge of her thigh to ensure that she doesn't miss even the slightest vibration.

Leon grumbles and the action on the screen comes to a standstill once he's mashed the pause button on the remote.

"Claire, why don't you just call Rebecca?"

She looks over at him, bewildered, and he sighs.

"Didn't Chris say they had an appointment with her? Just call Rebecca and ask if they made it to the appointment."

Claire thinks about it for a moment, but eventually gives in because it's the only option she has and she'd like to sleep for a little while tonight.

* * *

Rebecca pins the phone between her shoulder and ear as she struggles to locate the key to her office. The metal jangles loudly and she curses under her breath as she accidentally drops the heavy keyring on the floor. It lands on her foot and she frowns hard as she reaches down with a huff to snatch them back up.

"Y-yeah," She stutters, "I saw Chris a few days ago. He and Jill came."

"_I don't understand why he's not answering his phone then."_

Claire projects her thought aloud and Rebecca shrugs even though the woman can't see her.

"Maybe he's just busy."

She feels guilty for lying because she knows good and damn well why Chris isn't in the mood to chat with his sister on the phone.

"_Chris only has two hobbies, Becca. Jill Valentine and killing B.O.W.s."_

Rebecca somberly thinks he will soon only have one as she experimentally tries the handle to her office door in order to ensure that she had successfully locked it. When the handle doesn't budge, she shoves the noisy bundle of keys into her pocket and turns on her heel, only to find herself face-to-face with the polished barrel of a pistol.

"Claire, I'm sure Chris is fine," She says as calmly as she can manage as she glares directly into the eyes of the man before her, "But I'll call you back in a bit, okay? I have some work to finish up."

She doesn't want for a response before she ends the call. With her phone still in hand, she crosses her arms over her chest and raises an eyebrow expectantly.

"Can you please get that gun out of my face, Evan?" She clicks her tongue, "You might accidentally shoot yourself or something."

Evan complies and lowers the gun, but maintains a white-knuckled grip on the barrel. He's another medical researcher who works for the B.S.A.A., one who's still wet enough behind the ears to be overly passionate about the cause. Like many, Evan Robinson is one who's too far removed from the field to truly understand what bioterrorism is like. He buys into the theatrics and the blissfully naive belief that the B.S.A.A. is comprised of a bunch of heroes.

Rebecca is experienced enough to know that everyone has skeletons stuffed deep into the backs of their closets.

"I know all about what you've been doing!" He claims with a tremor in his voice, "And I won't let you get away with it!"

She truly has no idea what he's referring to and she shifts her weight to her opposite hip, anxious to get home so she can finally strip off her uncomfortable office clothes and eat her feelings via a pint of chocolate mint ice cream. The samples she retrieved from Jill's blood had started to devour the petri dish she kept them in and contaminated the entire fridge, rendering half of her ongoing experiments useless.

"Evan, I really don't know what you're so worked up about, but it sounds like a huge misunderstanding."

The blonde-haired man shakes his head in disagreement in a way that's nearly violent as he raises the gun once more.

"Agent Mitchell asked me to do some investigative work around the office." He explains with another shake of his head, one that communicates his disappointment. "I didn't believe him at first when he told me that he suspected you were harboring a B.O.W., but…"

Rebecca is speechless. Harboring a B.O.W.?

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Jill Valentine!" He retorts as he nods his head towards the door to her office.

Her breath catches in her throat, but she plays it cool. Had something happened in the last couple of days? Did they _know?_

"Jill Valentine is very much a human."

It's not really a lie if she doesn't know if it's true or not.

"She's a threat to humanity and you kept it a secret!" Evan hisses, "How could you do this, Rebecca? This isn't what the B.S.A.A. is about! We all made a promise to protect the world from bioterrorism!"

She somehow manages to keep from rolling her eyes. Evan had no idea what the fallout of the war on bioterrorism often was.

"Either you tell us where she's hidden or you come with me."

Rebecca sighs and tells herself that this is only a fraction of the punishment that she deserves.

* * *

The interrogation room is everything that Rebecca would have expected it to be-dark, dismal, and miserably cold. She tucks her hands beneath her armpits and hugs herself in an attempt to keep warm as she waits for Anthony Mitchell to arrive.

When he does, Rebecca is instantly reminded of how much she hates the cocky smirk that always seems to be plastered on his face.

"Dr. Rebecca Chambers." He greets and she returns the welcome as sweetly as she can.

"Agent Anthony Mitchell."

He's a young man, one directly recruited into the B.S.A.A. after completing his time in the Marine Corps. He still wears a short-cropped cut and sports enough shitty, drunkenly selected tattoos to illustrate the fact that he's a cocky, raging douchebag with a chip on his shoulder that he hopes to heal by treating those of lower rankings like trash.

Agent Mitchell takes a seat across from her and crosses his arms on the table's surface as he leans in close.

"I read your file, Chambers."

"Was it interesting?" She inquires with a soft, genuine smile.

He simpers.

"No, but I find it interesting that a woman who's been out in the field herself has the gall to hide a B.O.W. when she's seen the type of devastation that they can cause."

Rebecca tries her best to channel her inner Redfield as she leans back in her chair.

"Are you talking about my research?" She innocently asks, "Because I have the clearance to conduct experimentation with Uroboros, Progenitor, and all the variations of both viruses."

Mitchell laughs to himself.

"I'll ask nicely, Miss Chambers. Where's Jill Valentine?"

Rebecca shrugs.

"I haven't seen her in several days, Agent. Have you tried contacting Captain Redfield?"

Mitchell boredly taps his fingertips along the surface of the table and sighs.

"What is she infected with?"

Rebecca crosses her arms over her chest.

"It's been well-documented that Jill was infected with the T-Virus during the Raccoon City Incident, but she developed active immunity to the pathogen."

The sudden, loud smack of his fist against the table causes her to jump.

"That's not what I'm talking about and you _know_ it, Chambers. What does she have and where did she and Redfield run off to?"

So they truly _were_ missing.

"I don't know." She earnestly admits.

Mitchell pauses in thought as he stares at the crack in the brick on the wall behind Rebecca. An awkward, heavy silence sits between them and Rebecca wonders just how fucked she truly is. She tells herself that they can't arrest her, not until they present proof that they clearly don't have. Would it be considered treason against the country?

The man across from her leans back into the table and slips a piece of paper her way.

"Tell me why several vials of anesthetic and chemical paralytic are missing from medical inventory."

She glosses over the names of the medications printed on the sheet and shrugs.

"I guess someone isn't very good at counting and made a mistake, Agent. I'll be sure to lecture the pharmacy intern first thing in the morning."

When they release her, it takes everything to keep from collapsing as she waits for a taxi on the corner of the street. When she climbs into the cab, she's greeted with the opening score of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and she bursts into a fit of laughter.

The universe sure has an interesting sense of humor.

* * *

A huge thanks to those of you who have made it through this dark, horrible piece thus far. We are almost done! I'm so sorry for the delay. If you're interested in an update on what's happening and what is to come with my fics, please stop by my tumblr (irithyll-writes) to find out!

In response to criticism on my decision to add Billy to the work: I needed a character who was uninvolved with Chris and Jill, but was also important enough to Rebecca for her to confide in. I wasn't interested in investing time in fleshing out an original character to fulfill this role for this short fic, so Billy made the most sense. I felt like this role was vital in illustrating the turmoil Rebecca feels as a result of her position and her relationship with Chris and Jill. I hope you understand. I didn't intend to force a perceived Rebecca/Billy on readers.


	5. Chapter 5

Chris wishes he was the one losing his mind as he watches Jill cough into a crumpled up ball of tissue. It's a violent spell, one that makes her splutter and gasp for air, and it takes everything in him to keep from cringing at the sudden splatter of dark fluid that bleeds into the flimsy fabric of the tissue that she's clutching. He averts his eyes and finds interest in something else just in time to feel her gaze as she frantically attempts to discern if he had seen it.

He lets her have this, lets her believe that he doesn't know that she's slowly withering away right before his eyes. Chris pretends he didn't see what came out of her last night - a fat, wriggling, worm-like creature that convulsed about in her handful of tissue. He doesn't comment on the way she pushes food around on her plate in a futile attempt to hide her lack of appetite and he allows her to think that he doesn't hear her speaking in low, hushed tones to herself in an empty room.

Jill is fading away. She's weary and pale, so thin that he has to do a double take to ensure he can't see _through_ her. Jill Valentine, once the strongest woman he knew, is now made humble by a monster that he cannot see and he cannot keep from blaming himself. Albert Wesker should have died by his hands on that fateful night in the Arklay Mansion. At the very least, Chris acknowledges that he should have been the one to break the raging, frozen waters outside of the Spencer Estate.

He wonders if Wesker would have taken him, if he would have been the one to succumb to the torture that Jill endures. Somehow, he doesn't think he would have lasted as long as she had.

Chris watches her with a watery gaze, but manages to blink away the tears that cloud his vision with impressive haste. Jill is poised on the edge of the porch, clad in a sweater that's inappropriately heavy for the light brisk of autumn. Her legs are drawn to her chest and her chin rests on her knees as she watches the sun slowly drift below the horizon, her long, pale braid draped heavily over her shoulder.

For a moment, the orange glow of the sky makes her seem alive. It bathes her in a warm, healthy light and Chris is briefly reminded of the woman he once knew. There's a lively radiance that dusts over her nose and cheeks and the light reflecting off her pale eyes hides the dullness that has long since settled in. Her lips curl into a ghost of a smile and she lets her eyelashes flutter closed while she takes in a slow, deep breath through her nose to appreciate the clean, crisp air of the beach.

Something twists in his chest at the sight of it.

_His mouth crashed against hers with more force than intended, but Chris struggled to contain his fervor. Without missing a beat, he tangled his fingers in her dark hair, forcing it out of the tight ponytail it had been pulled into. His opposite palm came to rest at the swell of her hip and he groaned at the feel of her warmth that radiated through the thick fabric of her wetsuit. _

_Jill felt so right pressed up against him, all flat planes and smooth curves pinned between his hard body and the sand beneath him. Under other circumstances, he would have been annoyed with the substance and the way the grains filled his boots with an uncomfortable coldness, but he found it difficult to care with the taste of her in his mouth._

_She pulled away to cup his face in her hands and he relished the warm press of the pads of her thumbs against his cheekbones as she murmured, "Chris, what's gotten into you?"_

_He turned slightly in her hold to press a kiss to the soft skin of her palm._

"_Nothing." He insisted, briefly catching her lips with his own before breaking away to press his forehead against hers and breathe in the salty air. "I just…almost lost you, Jill."_

_He felt his blood begin to simmer at the recollection of O'Brian's words - _"We've lost contact with Jill."

_Before his rage could get the best of him, she brushed her lips against the rough stubble sprinkled along the cut of his jaw._

"_But you didn't." She whispered, lifting her hips to meet his in order to emphasize her final words, "You have me, Chris. Always have, always will."_

Chris feels something hot begin to pool in the pit of his stomach. It causes him to shift uncomfortably even as he stands, arm extended to offer Jill his hand. She breaks her gaze away from the shoreline to give him a perplexed look and he smiles with that sideways, boyish grin that captivated her on day one.

"What?" She breathes, unable to fight the slight smile that breaks out on her own face.

He laughs and stretches his arm further, putting his expectant palm closer to her.

"Come on." He insists. "You love the beach."

For a moment, she forgets she's broken; that she's a traumatized, fucked up survivor of a bioterrorist experiment gone horribly _right. _Chris's skin is hot and calloused against her own and she entwines her fingers with his, gripping his hand with as much strength as she can muster. She lets him lead her to the sugary sand and she laughs as she slips, catching herself on his bicep with white-knuckled fingers.

Chris wraps his arm around her and has to draw it in a little closer than he's used to. Her waist is more narrow than his muscle memory recalls it to be, but he quickly corrects the action before she can dwell on it. Jill leans into him and nuzzles his shoulder as he leads her close to the water's edge.

The crash of the waves against the shore is loud, but she appreciates that about it because it drowns out the whispers that have become white noise in her mind. She feels the bite of the October air against her cheeks and can feel the flush begin to surface and she rubs at the sting with the back of her sleeve. The chill creeps into her lungs and she coughs hard - once, twice - and swallows down something thick that surfaces in her throat.

She doesn't want to know what it is and Chris doesn't ask if she's alright because he knows she's not.

"It's been a while." He comments and Jill nods her head.

They stand like that for a while. She leans against him and watches the water lap at the edges of her toes, bubbling and saturating the sand as it retreats. It isn't long before the crystal clear foam froths with pink and she clenches her eyes shut to dispel the image from her mind because she knows it's not real, but the sea bleeds red for a fleeting moment when she finds the courage to glance back up at it.

Out near the sandbar, she sees something bob in the water - fleshy, pink, and slimy with bloated skin like those slithering bastards that had once washed up on the beach back in 2005. She looks up at Chris to determine if it's real and his neutral expression confirms that it's not. _You're just crazy,_ she thinks to herself, but she can't manage to stare back out at the ocean just yet.

Instead, she studies Chris. She takes in the fine creases that have formed in the corners of his eyes and the hints of silver that pepper his sideburns and beard. He doesn't look the way he used to and she wonders how much blame she can shoulder for his greys. His build is thick and wide, more so than it ever has been, but she knows he's wearier than ever. She sees it in his eyes, in the dullness of his dark irises that once burned with the liveliness of his youth.

He catches her gaze and turns towards her with an unsure smile.

"See something you like?" He teases and a flush bleeds across her cheeks as she turns away to stare at her toes that have half sunken in the sand because his stare makes her feel so stupidly small.

A sound of discomfort rumbles in his throat and he cups her shoulder with his hand as he gives it a reassuring squeeze.

"Jill, you know I love you, right?"

The question catches her off guard. She _does_ know that, doesn't she? He would have left her in Kijuju if he hadn't, right?

"_Don't flatter yourself."_ An accented voice admonishes. "_Chris simply likes to feel like a hero."_

Jill closes her eyes and tries to focus on the oceanic breeze.

"_He would have done it for anyone." _Excella laughs as she appears in Jill's periphery, elegantly tiptoeing her way to the ocean's edge with the gauzy skirt of her dress gathered in her hands. It leaves the long, sleek curves of her calves on display and she looks back at Jill from over her shoulder with a sneer as her long, wavy hair catches in the wind.

"_You know you're nothing special, Jill."_

She doesn't want to entertain it. Jill tells herself that if she ignores her, Excella is bound to disappear.

"_Oh, right."_ Excella pauses as she turns to face Jill, already up to her knees in the water. "_It must be hard to speak with Uroboros crawling out of your dirty throat."_

Jill's breath hitches and she takes a sudden step forward.

"Is that what it is?" She asks, eyebrows raised in alarm.

Excella smiles, all bright, pearly teeth as she rolls her shoulders in a shrug before allowing herself to fall backwards. Jill hears the splash of water as she lands, but the water remains undisturbed, crashing on the shore with the same repetition that it always had.

Chris's hold on her hand tightens and he has to restrain himself from squeezing too hard, fearful that her brittle bones may snap.

"I missed this." He comments offhandedly and Jill just nods, appreciative of his feigned obliviousness to her outburst.

"Me too." She lies.

Jill wishes she would have died when she crashed through that fucking window.

* * *

Claire's knuckles are stinging from the force with which she pounds on Chris's door. She doesn't know if the bastard is home or not because it's not unlike him to ignore whoever decides to drop by when Jill isn't around to greet them. In the case that he is home, she looks up at the nondescript security camera poised up in the corner of his porch railing and flips it off.

"If you're ignoring me, you're going to be sorry." She hisses through gritted teeth before slamming her hand against the door once more.

She feels as though she's being watched and she looks back over her shoulder to see the elderly woman next door standing in the midst of her driveway. Her mouth is agape as she watches Claire's antics and the small dog she's attempting to walk is wildly thrashing about, testing the length of its leash as it gnashes its teeth at her.

Claire forces a smile and waves to the neighbor.

"It's okay, I'm his sister!" She shouts as though the explanation is all the proof the woman needs.

The woman narrows her eyes, squinting to get a better look at Claire and she wonders if she's going to call the police. With her back turned to the woman, Claire rolls her eyes before she begins to fish through her key ring. They all look so damn similar, but she finally procures the right one and triumphantly holds it in the air, giving it a little jingle.

"See? I have a key." She doesn't bother to look back at the woman as she mumbles, "Nosy bitch."

She pushes open the door and is greeted with the welcome scent of jasmine and vanilla. Claire knows it's Jill's doing and she briefly smiles to herself, proud of the subtle ways in which the woman has been able to tame her animal of a brother. Were it not for her influence, she assumed his house would reek of soiled laundry and stale beer, just as it had whilst Jill was...well, _dead._

There's a quiet stillness in the air that leads her to believe the home is empty, but Claire kicks off her shoes in the doorway anyway. She makes her way into the living room and eyes the blanket strewn across the couch with particular scrutiny. Jill's far too neat to leave the house amiss and she wonders if, perhaps, someone _is_ home after all.

"Hello?" She calls out as she regards the staircase curiously before making her way upstairs.

The emptiness of their bedroom makes her uneasy. Claire feels something heavy settle in the pit of her stomach and she hovers in the doorway for a moment with one hand poised on the doorframe as she studies the room. The bed is unkempt, sheets tangled and halfway on the floor, and she takes note of the half empty glass sitting on the bedside table. She doesn't know why it makes her feel so terrible, but she can't shake the gut feeling that something is _terribly_ wrong.

She takes a deep breath, one that does nothing to calm or cleanse her mind as she steps into the room. Swallowing hard, she takes a seat on the side of the bed and steels her body as she attempts to convince herself to open the drawer of the bedside table. From where she's seated, she smells Chris - a mixture of clove and citrus - and she feels the familiar, pinprick sensation of tears forming behind her eyes.

Claire doesn't know why she's feeling like this.

With a final sigh, she leans forward and wrenches open the top drawer of the bedside table, but finds it to be offensively empty. The handgun Chris ordinarily keeps stashed away is missing and Claire feels her heart rate begin to accelerate. She doesn't know what she fears that its absence connotes-or, rather, she _does,_ but doesn't want to admit it.

She stands on shaky legs and tucks a strand of auburn hair that's fallen loose from her ponytail behind her ear. Something compels her to enter the bathroom and she freezes mid-step as she pushes open the door. Taped to the mirror is a white envelope, one with her name scrawled across the front in Chris's familiar, slanted script.

Time seems to trickle slowly in that moment as she stares hard at the paper, not daring to move. From her vantage point, it obscures the reflection of her face in the mirror and she finds herself stuck in a trance, gawking so hard that the lines of her name almost seem to disappear before her very eyes.

She snatches it away with a sudden movement and flips it over in her hands, slipping her nail beneath the sealed edge and tearing it open. As she retrieves the note from inside, she briefly worries her lower lip between her teeth as her blood beats loudly in her ears.

_Claire,_

_I'm sorry. I can't expect you to understand, but know that I love you._

_Chris_

No matter how many times she reads it, Claire can't shake the cryptic nature of it. What the _fuck_ did it mean? Since when did Chris keep _secrets_ from her? Why couldn't he get the fuck over himself and let her help?

Furious, she slams the note down on the marble countertop and buries her face in her hands. Sighing so hard that the action seems to rattle her bones, Claire lifts her face away from her palms and looks up at the ceiling for a moment to collect herself before continuing her search. Out of the corner of her eye, she notes the reflection of light off a surface, and she frowns hard when she realizes Chris left his phone behind. Arranged neatly in the corner of the countertop, it seems to taunt her with its presence. She feels that its abandonment contains a jarring sense of finality.

Chris didn't want to be found, but that was a challenge that Claire was willing to accept. She _would_ find him regardless of whether he wanted her to or not.

* * *

The loud knocking at her office door tears Rebecca from her reverie. She jolts to attention and, in her surprise, knocks over a cup that had been placed dangerously close to her hand. Rebecca curses under her breath as she watches the coffee spill across her desk and claim a stack of papers nearby, but she allows it to flow over its surface as she rises from her chair.

As her hand hovers over the handle of her door, she hesitates. The last thing she needs is another accusatory interrogation session with some jackass on a power trip.

"Beck!" Claire's muffled voice echoes through the thick material of the door. "I need to talk to you!"

A chill run downs her spine, a sensation that Rebecca can't suppress. She feels a sense of trepidation as she opens the door and casts Claire a weak smile. Claire does not return the gesture and instead hurries past her, shutting the door behind her and engaging the lock with a loud _click_ that's suddenly one of the most unsettling sounds Rebecca has ever heard.

"Chris…" She begins, eyes flitting to everything she can find but Rebecca's face.

"Chris is…"

Her voice cracks and she holds her eyes closed as she lets out a shaky sigh. She procures a small white card, the one she found taped to the mirror, and Rebecca reads it with a perplexed expression.

"Claire, this doesn't mean anything." Rebecca rationalizes, but Claire interrupts her by jabbing a wrinkled, folded sheet of paper in her face.

Rebecca's skin tingles with guilt. Suddenly, breathing feels like a chore and her throat is impossibly dry even as she swallows.

"This…"

She looks at it once again.

_Lethal dose of midazolam._

_Respiratory depression with midazolam._

_Midazolam overdose._

Chris's incriminating search history.

"How did Chris get his hands on a sedative?"

Rebecca flounders at the question, lips parting and closing stupidly as she splutters for a response. She reads the words again and again, the questions Chris didn't have the confidence to ask her in secret. Rebecca feels ill and she tears her stare away to locate the trash bin nearby in case she truly does vomit.

"First, do no harm." She whispers, eyes shimmering with the onset of tears.

It's the biggest lie she's ever been told.

"I can't expect you to understand, but…" A sob breaks through and she sniffles, pale skin flushing with the strain of holding in her breakdown, "Sometimes, there are worse things than death."

Claire's face twists into a pained expression. Her eyebrows furrow together and her lips form into a deep frown as she begins to cry. With trembling hands, she bats the tears away as best she can, but they continue to spill down her heated cheeks.

"It's mercy." Rebecca says, voice so soft it's hardly audible. "It's the most humane thing to do. I've...I've been studying it for months, Claire! It doesn't _die. _Biologically, it's perfect."

She grimaces at her own choice of words.

"I've never seen anything like it. Nothing stops it and…" Rebecca pictures the dozens of half-eaten Petri dishes in her mind, "It's ruthless."

For a while, the silence between them is only broken by an occasional sniffle or wet sigh. Claire digests the information slowly, eyes locked on Rebecca's face but unseeing as she drowns in her own thoughts. Finally, she collapses into a chair nearby and looks pointedly at Rebecca.

"Why did you put it on Chris?" She spits the question like venom. "You should have done it yourself."

Rebecca inhales deeply as her hands ball into fists.

"You and I both know he wouldn't have it any other way. It's catharsis."

Claire laughs.

"It's murder."

It sets her off. Rebecca stomps forward with an accusatory finger pointed in Claire's direction as her lips pull back into a near snarl.

"You don't know the guilt Chris lives with, Claire!" She nearly shouts. "How he feels _responsible_ for all of this. Jill _died_ for him and he brought her back like _this._"

Claire's face scrunches into a miserable expression as she takes a fistful of the front of her shirt in an attempt to alleviate the sudden burning chest pain that overtakes her.

"Why wouldn't he tell me?" She whispers.

"Because he loves you too much to break you." Rebecca says. "You're all he has left now."

* * *

"I'm sorry." Jill manages to cough out as the toilet greedily drinks up the contents of her stomach with a loud gurgle.

Chris smiles and leans forward to wipe away the dark fluid that's smeared across the edge of her lower lip. His touch lingers for a moment as his eyes meet hers and he closes the small distance between them to press a kiss against her temple.

"Don't worry about it." He murmurs, letting his lips brush over her skin.

She laughs bitterly and shakes her head as she looks down at her hands that tremble in her lap.

"I'm sure you're disgusted with me." Her voice cracks as she speaks. "I know I'm-"

"You're beautiful." Chris interjects as he cups the side of her face with a warm palm, "You always look so _fucking_ beautiful."

Jill's lips part in surprise, cracked and pale, but it doesn't matter to him because she's Jill goddamn Valentine and he loves her more than anything he's ever known. The skin beneath her eyes has become so thin, perpetually stained with a dark shadow, and he nearly shivers at the cold feel of her hand against his.

"You don't have to lie." She says, laughing awkwardly as she speaks.

She doesn't anticipate the warm press of his lips against hers. Jill's eyes widen in surprise, but she gratefully accepts the gesture. One of her palms rests against his chest and she clasps his hand in her other, holding on more tightly than necessary.

He doesn't mind. Chris kisses her slowly and softly as she grabs him as though she fears he might slip away. He's slow and methodical in his movements, occasionally nipping at her lower lip or allowing his tongue to meet hers. It's a far cry from his usual fervent mannerisms, but Jill takes what she can get.

His hands tangle in her hair and he slips a finger beneath the elastic band that holds it in a messy bun. With an eager tug, her long, pale locks tumble free and he loosely fists them to angle her jaw more appropriately. Chris rises on his knees and holds her beneath him as he groans into her mouth, desperate to lose himself in her.

Jill feels starved for air and she breaks off the kiss. Her breathing comes in short, staggered pants, but it doesn't deter him. Chris trails wet, open-mouthed kisses along the long column of her throat, eliciting a quiet moan on her part. He smiles against her skin and repositions the collar of her shirt, pulling it down as far as the fabric allows.

He presses his lips to the grooves of her ribs that have become apparent in her chest as a result of her dwindling appetite. If her bony appearance disgusts him in any way, Jill wouldn't know - not with the way he worships her body with his mouth. She gasps when he nips at the tender skin and tangles her fingers in the hair at the base of his skull.

Chris pulls off her shirt with ease and crushes his mouth against hers once again. He traces the bumps of her spine with a curious hand until he finds the clasp of her bra and deftly releases it. His other hand slides along the flat of her belly and over her ribs, coming to rest at the underside of her breast.

"I love you." He gasps into her mouth, tugging at her lower lip with his teeth.

Jill makes a quiet sound in response, unable to properly speak with the way he's ravaging her mouth. She takes fistfuls of the front of her shirt in an attempt to keep grounded as he suddenly slips his hands beneath her thighs and lifts her from the ground. Her legs lock around his waist and she nervously laughs as he lays her down on the mattress.

Chris hovers over her and pulls off his own shirt before lifting her bra away from her body. He counts the spaces in her ribcage as she lets her eyes follow the chiseled lines of the musculature he has worked so hard to craft. She idly thinks that they must look awfully silly together, her body an angled, grotesque mess of pale skin stretched taut over bone and a stark contrast to the healthy, tan flesh and athleticism that he boasts despite his age.

He buries his face in her sternum and loops an arm around her back to hold her against him. She feels the hot, moist puffs of her breath against her skin and wiggles uncomfortably beneath him, an action that earns a lighthearted chuckle on his behalf. He notes how he can nearly encompass the entire width of her ribcage in one palm as he slides it along her side and brushes his thumb over her nipple that's already begun to pebble in the chilled air.

She hisses at the contact and he teasingly circles it with a finger as he presses kisses along her sternum. His actions are slow and deliberate, careful and conscientious because he wants to ensure that he's committed every last inch of her to his memory. The rough, raised scars on her chest tickle the soft skin of his lips and he counts each and every mark with a chaste kiss. His hands find the puckered flesh that runs along her side, a reminder of the haphazard stitches that once held her together during a particularly rough mission in the past when immediate evacuation wasn't an option.

When moves to slide his hand between her thighs, he feels the rough, dark flesh that has begun to claim the inside of her leg. Perhaps it's contagious, but he doesn't particularly care. He pays it no mind because he wants to convince her that she's still _his_ Jill Valentine.

For now, she doesn't question it - not with the way his fingers are pumping in and out of her with lazy, practiced strokes.

"Chris." She murmurs and he smiles down at her before pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth. "I love you."

He grins as though it's the first time he's heard it and kisses her deeply with an insistence that makes her shiver with need.

"You're the best thing that's ever happened to me." He confesses as he slides into her.

_The last best thing that'll ever happen to me,_ he thinks, but doesn't dare say it.

* * *

"_I'm just going to spend the night tonight. Just in case he comes home, you know?"_

Leon knows Claire well enough to tell she's holding back a snivel even through the phone.

"That's fine," he assures her, "Do you need me to bring you anything? Do you want me to stay with you?"

"_No, it's fine." _

He smiles wryly at his wife's stubbornness.

"You sure you don't want to borrow my pillow?" He snickers, "You might miss me too much."

Leon can practically hear her roll her eyes through the phone.

"_I'll enjoy getting a good night's sleep without having to endure your snoring, actually."_

He laughs to himself as he unlocks the door to his car as quietly as he can manage, hoping she doesn't hear it over the phone.

"It's the other way around, dear." He insists. "You're the one who snores."

Claire doesn't put up much of an argument because they both know that _he's_ the one with the sinus issues, but he enjoys teasing her anyway, given the context of the situation. It doesn't take much effort for him to convince Liv that a sleepover with Moira is well overdue - only simple bribery with a box of cake mix and a jar of sprinkles with the promise that she can eat as many cupcakes as she wants as long as she doesn't tell her mother.

His demeanor shifts the moment he gets in his car. There's something solemn that hangs in the air, an ominous feeling that he can't shake. Leon won't allow himself to think too deeply about the potential outcome that lingers in the back of his mind because, if he's being honest with himself, his intuition is rarely wrong.

He thinks he knows where Chris has gone.

"_Hey, man. I know it doesn't do shit to hear it, but...I'm really sorry." Leon lamely offered, sinking down into the couch beside Chris as he cracked open his own beer._

_Chris nodded quietly to himself before taking a healthy mouthful of his drink._

"_Thanks." He finally responded, gaze unwavering from the surface of Claire's coffee table._

_They were quiet for a while, each of them nursing their alcohol as the gravity of the situation weighed heavily between them. Jill had officially been declared dead and Claire refused to allow Chris to return home in a poorly veiled attempt at a suicide watch._

"_If you want," Leon speaks up, "I can...clean out your place for you."_

_Chris knew what he was suggesting, that he could erase Jill's existence from the house they once shared._

"_Thanks, but I'm good."_

_Leon nodded and the conversation fizzled out into an awkward silence before Chris unexpectedly broke it._

"_She left everything to me." He admitted, still engaged in a staring contest with the beaten up coffee table before them. "I don't understand why she'd do that."_

"_Because she loved you." Leon coolly responded without even a fraction of hesitation._

"_It feels wrong." Chris sighed as he leaned back into the couch and Leon caught a glimpse of the alcoholic flush that dusted his cheeks. "I don't want to benefit from it."_

"_You could donate it." Leon suggested. "Or use it in a way that'd make her proud."_

_In retrospect, Leon didn't know much about Jill. Did she have hobbies? What did she like aside from Chris Redfield and kicking bioterrorist ass? Was she as serious in casual situations as she was on the field?_

_He supposed he wouldn't ever know._

"_There's this…" Chris hesitated, taking another swig of his drink for courage, "This strip of beach a few hours out. She really liked it. It meant a lot to her."_

_Leon swore he saw Chris's shoulders tremble._

"_You could buy it." Leon affirmed. "She probably would have liked that."_

_Chris laughed and ran a hand over his face in exasperation._

"_I was going to pop the question after that fucking mission. Right there on that beach."_

"_Sounds like a good investment then." Leon advised, doing his best to hide his surprise, "I know a good realtor."_

Leon sighs as he clicks his seatbelt into place and turns up the radio. It's a few hours to the coast and he might as well enjoy it while it lasts because he knows a wicked storm is coming.

* * *

Jill's eyes are heavily lidded with sleep as she lays beside him. There's a small ghost of a smile on her face as she studies him through her heavy lashes and Chris presses a kiss to her forehead.

"Get some sleep." He encourages her as he runs a hand along her upper arm. "I know you're tired."

Jill thinks it might be the understatement of the year given the weight of her bones and complete lack of energy that kept her from pulling on her own clothes after they were sweaty and spent. Chris slipped his shirt onto her and it dwarfs her cachexic frame in an almost comical fashion.

"I love you," she mumbles, "No matter what _they_ say."

Chris has a hunch as to who she's referring to, but he doesn't ask her to elaborate because it doesn't really matter. He pulls her closer so that her head rests below his chin and he buries his nose in her hair as breathes her in.

"You're everything to me, Jill." He impresses himself with the way he says it, confidently and without even the slightest hint of the tears that run down his cheeks. "I'm so sorry that all of this happened."

Jill shifts in his hold and he feels her nose brush against his collarbone as she shakes her head.

"I'm not." She whispers. "I'd jump out that window a thousand times if it meant saving your life, Chris."

He takes in a shaky breath and does his best to ignore the way her words roughly tear at his heartstrings.

"Maybe in the next life," he says, "Maybe we can have picket fences and a happily ever after."

"And a dog." She sleepily mumbles. "A dog that never listens."

Chris laughs and pulls her closer as he swipes at his eyes with the back of his hand before whispering, "As many dogs as you want."

He feels her grow heavy in his hold and waits until her breathing evens out to move. Chris runs his thumb over the curves of her lips, anxiously worried scabs and all, and cups her face in his hand. He rakes his fingers through her hair, memorizes the softness of it, lines her palm up with his to compare sizes.

"God forgive me." He pleads, but he doesn't truly believe that such an entity exists. Chris doesn't want to worship a God that would let her suffer the way that she has.

The syringe feels heavier than lead in his hand and he swipes his thumb over the pale blue vein in her arm. He presses a kiss to her temple as a sob chokes free, but he pulls her skin taut with his free hand and moves. The needle sinks in with disturbing ease and Chris breaks down as he presses the plunger with a trembling hand.

He holds her tight as he listens to her breathing slow.

"I'm so sorry, Jill." He gasps against her ear and feels her hair become damp with his tears. "I love you so fucking much, I just can't…"

She takes a long breath.

"I can't let you suffer anymore." He whimpers. "I…"

Her next breath is short and staggered, strained.

"I wish you would have died when you fell through that window." He chokes out. "And I hate myself for it."

Chris wraps his hand around her wrist and feels the faint, slow flutter of her pulse.

"If there is an afterlife," he says, "I'll find you and...I hope you'll forgive me."

He laughs because he doesn't know what else to do.

"You're the only good part of me that I had left."

He nuzzles the side of her face.

"I don't know how to do this without you."

Jill takes her final breath and Chris begins to weep.

* * *

The little seaside cottage is more charming than he would have imagined it to be. Leon finds that he's impressed by a side of Chris that he never knew existed as he made his way onto the small porch that's accented by blush pink peonies. He notes the small pair of flip flops that sit beside the welcome mat-Jill's, he assumes-and he knocks a few times before pushing the magnolia wreath that hangs on the door aside to peer through the windowpane.

He doesn't see anyone and he wonders if he's made a mistake. Maybe he found the wrong strip of beach, but just as he's about to step away from the door, he catches a glimpse of a familiar, charcoal grey cardigan draped across the back of a chair. It's an article of clothing that's nearly become synonymous with Jill in his mind as of late and he feels his gut sink for reasons he can't necessarily explain.

It doesn't take much effort to get through the door. Leon isn't so impressed with Chris's security measures as he hears the lock give once he's shoved a credit card between the door frame and the knob, but he supposes the handgun on the coffee table is as much security as a man with Chris's caliber of marksmanship would need.

The cottage is eerily silent and Leon pauses in order to summon his resolve. It's a small structure, thus far composed of a living area and a kitchen, and he can only assume that the closed door across the room leads to a bedroom. He waits outside with an ear pressed to its surface while he works up the courage to enter.

Leon thinks about a lot of things as he leans against the door, lungs swollen with a breath that he refuses to let escape. He imagines that Chris will come barging in with a handgun drawn, windswept from a day spent at the beach with a slightly sunburnt Jill in tow. He thinks that maybe they're naked, entangled in the sheets and sleeping in one another's arms in their post-coital bliss that he's about to ruin. He thinks about Claire and the sigh of relief that'll sound in his ear as he calls to tell her that he's found Chris and then the subsequent gasp that she'll make when he reveals that her brother broke his nose in surprise after having assumed he was an intruder.

And he thinks about Uroboros squirming across the ashen hardwood floor beneath his feet.

Leon squeezes his eyes closed, lets out the breath he's held hostage, and counts to ten before slamming open the door.

The moment he sees it, he knows there's no point in checking for a pulse. Living tissue doesn't lack color and he finds that 911 isn't so easy to dial when your vision is blurred with tears.

* * *

Claire buries her face in the curve of Barry's shoulder as he pulls her into a tight embrace. He lingers as he crushes her against his chest and Claire imagines that Barry gives the same type of bear hugs that her father would have, had he lived long enough for her to remember him. She appreciates the way he squeezes the air from her lungs because it reminds her that she's alive even if Chris _isn't._

"We love you, Claire." Barry's voice rumbles in her ear. "Me, Kathy, the girls. You've always been one of our own."

She rests her chin against his shoulder and nods as she grips the lapels of his suit because she doesn't want to let go, but Barry pulls away and dabs at his eyes with a piece of tissue.

"Just…" He laughs because he doesn't know what to say. "Fuck. _Fuck._"

Claire's eyes are aching and swollen and she's surprised when her vision becomes distorted with more tears because she could have sworn she had used them all up.

"Fuck." She echoes as she anxiously wrings her own handful of tissue in her hands.

There's only one casket because Claire insisted such. It only seems fitting to bury them together; Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, two sides of the same coin. Leon had found them tangled in each other's arms with a needle still halfway buried in Chris's arm and Claire begged the undertaker to leave them that way, but whether or not he did, she'd never know.

The casket remains closed and there is no priest or prolific eulogy to be read. It's just the few of them - Barry, Leon, Rebecca, and herself - solemnly surrounding the hole in the earth as it steadily fills with dirt.

Claire looks up at the sky, boundless blue and without a cloud in sight. She feels the chilly breeze lick at her wet face and she closes her eyes, breathing in the scent of fresh earth and the brisk air. The weather is nice and the leaves are stained with a fiery series of color that doesn't seem appropriate for such a sad occasion, but she appreciates it in some strange way.

She stares hard at the neat rectangle of dirt that sticks out above the earth and kneels beside it to lay a bundle of peonies atop of it.

"The Redfield curse." She jokes, knowing Chris can't hear her. "First mom and dad and now you. You're such a bastard."

Claire laughs as she wipes away tears for what she assumes is the thousandth time that day.

"I hope you're at peace now, Chris." She whispers before rising to stand and turn into Leon's embrace.

"Are you alright?" He murmurs into her hair and she nods against his chest because Claire finds that she can find solace in one thing.

If nothing else, it was a beautiful ceremony.


End file.
